The Thief
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Replacement story for The Metamorph. Set after Hogwarts, Harry Potter is a thief, a seasoned burglar and pickpocket with a dark past. Through his days of meandering through life and picking up "things" out of kleptomaniac need, he remembers his life and the war with Lord Voldemort.
1. Chapter 1

FOREWORD: Well, it's up. The replacement story for 'The Metamorph,' and my final Harry Potter story. I just find this fandom hard to deal with sometimes, but I had wanted to write a story where Harry was a criminal, maybe not the level of James Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories, but a criminal that got by.

I failed with the Metamorph. This one is going to be simpler. I don't normally bother with rewrites - they eat up too much time, and I've got other stories in the works. A lot more. I would like to get on with them.

I'm sorry this is late - I was moving house, and my older draft was deleted by accident. But I hope you enjoy it.

As usual, I don't own Harry Potter, but trust me - if I did, then it would be different.

* * *

The Thief.

He had always been good at this, even as a child, though there had been moments where he had thought that the objects he had picked up in other people's homes would try to shudder and shake as they tried to escape him, like a hamster wriggling to get out of too tight a grip.

That was the trouble with The Things; they always seemed to want to escape from him, but then he would always win. When he had stolen some of the money from his uncle and aunt's before he had escaped them when he'd merely been a child was a noteworthy example; he had spent the majority of his life in that house of hell being shrieked and bellowed at while getting a vivid purple toned face shoved into his personal space while two large, meaty hands either tried to strangle him, or punch him until he was barely conscious. He was sure that there were a few concussions, but he couldn't really remember - the Dursleys had never given a thought to his injuries, they had just heaped more on.

But he didn't regret stealing from his uncle and aunt though he had wanted to take a few Things from Dudley's bedroom to sell but he had been pressed for time and he had needed to get out of the house, even now that the Dursley family were either dead or in a state worse than death after that mess with the tournament. If he hadn't stolen from them after getting that desire to escape firm inside his mind, then he may not have survived to make it to his teen years, even if his teenage years had made him think he had exchanged one set of monsters for some new ones though he had lost his fear of the Death Eaters and Lord Voldemort after Luna's death…

He had once thought the Dursleys were scary, but Voldemort was much, much worse.

Harry shoved that to the side, not needing to remember the bad memories which had been haunting him for the last few years since he had left the magical world, mentally telling himself he needed all of his wits about him, though the ache that had come from Luna's death and what the girl must have experienced still haunted him. He was standing on a Tube station platform, breathing in the heady musk common to the London Underground, a mixture of ozone created by the spark of the third rail, and the combined sweat of the commuters, watching the various commuters on the platform.

It didn't take him that long to find the right mark. Some pickpockets weren't very picky, but he was. He preferred tourists and rich people to steal from; rich people for obvious reasons, but tourists carried lots of cash, though sometimes it wasn't always a guarantee since many tourists were cheapskates within their home countries, so why would they change their attitudes simply because they were hundreds of miles away?

The question was how many Things could he get in the next few hours, or will he be taking wallets?

00000000000000000000000000000

In front of him was a man who was dressed in a neat suit, probably worth over a few grand - probably a banker though they were a long way from the financial district. Harry's eyes swept over the man's body, noting the custom shoes which were well made and so shiny that they didn't have a hint of wear and tear in them.

The mark was probably somewhere between his late forties, early fifties, somewhere along those lines, with neatly parted dark hair and a clean shaven face.

His wealth was clear to see for anyone around him. Oh, Harry hoped he had Things in his home. He had on his wrist an expensive wristwatch, but that didn't make much difference for Harry who didn't often bother stealing wristwatches, though he may make an exception in this case. But what was clear was the clear uncertainty on the man's perspiring face, and how he was looking up and down the platform at everyone around him with a dazed expression on his face and was clutching his travel card uncertainly with fingers as thick as sausages. Watching him made Harry think he was out of his depth.

Sticking his hands in his jacket pockets, Harry clutched the handle of his wand and he silently augmented the spells he had cast over himself to ensure no-one would be paying him much attention before he glanced up at the train destination board. The next train would be arriving in a few moments and all he needed to do was wait. That was the great thing about the Tube, he thought, all the trains were fast.

Most of the time, he added mentally, thinking of all the delays and mishaps that were prone to happen around here. He never took his hands off the man's face, he seemed jumpy despite his nervousness and uncertainty. Every time someone walked close to him, he would recoil slightly.

When the train rushed into the station, it's bright white, red and blue livery shining in the stark lighting of the platform lights, the man jumped as the train's rails screeched as the brakes were applied. The Tube was clearly not his usual method of travel, but Harry found himself apathetic to the guy's feelings. The mark was further startled when the doors opened as though he were completely unaware of what to do next, but he caught on quickly and boarded the train. Harry got on himself, folding a newspaper he had in his hands and switched it over to his other hand to create a shield before walking over to the mark who was standing in the same doorway of the train he had stepped through.

Harry walked over to him, using the notice-me-not charms to ensure no-one paid him any attention. Using the newspaper, Harry gently lowered it to create a shield to prevent the rest of the passengers from seeing what he was doing, before he deftly slipped his fingers into the man's jacket pocket.

The tips of Harry's fingers pinched the corner of the wallet, the slick leather reassuring him and prompted him to go on.

The man suddenly turned in his direction, eyes wide and staring and mouth slack. He was clearly nervous. Harry paused instantly; the muggle couldn't have seen him through the spells he'd placed over him, but he quickly took advantage of the situation and he peered into the muggle's mind and saw where he lived, the precise address and the security in his home.

God, this guy's wife had dozens of Things, not to mention his daughter.

He'd be perfect.

The mark turned away and the legilimency probe was broken.

Breathing in gently Harry held onto the wallet, and then gently pulled it out, that familiar heart pounding sensation sweeping through his body as he pulled the wallet out of the man's pocket before he gently pushed the wallet into his own jacket and refolded the newspaper and shoved it into the same pocket while he took deep breaths to try to return his body temperature to what it had been previously, and he waited for the train to arrive at its next stop while letting his eyes scan the surroundings around him.

Harry's fingers still had that lingering tension which had come from stealing the wallet which was someone else's personal property and entering someone else's personal space. Harry backed away from the mark, who was looking around the train as though he were an astronaut on some alien world and completely out of his depth, so leaving the mark was not difficult.

When the train pulled into the next station, Harry got off it and found that it was a hub station where there were other lines meeting each other. Harry chose one of the lines at random and proceeded down an escalator. He had no fixed destination in mind - there were days when he wasn't in college or doing jobs for 'them' that he would spend his time travelling backwards and forwards on the Tube and picking pockets.

The trains were perfect - they were always so cramped and full of people with wallets and purses, carrying loads of shopping or luggage, that he knew he could get away with it.

He knew the Tube intimately after spending some of his childhood picking the pockets of dozens of marks and learning the ropes from Terry, and he soon saw another mark. This time it was a woman in her twenties who looked well off, perhaps not as well off as the previous mark, but she looked like someone who had loads of cash if the collection of massive shopping bags wrapped around her wrists like enormous bracelets was any clue.

Harry studied her. Form the way she was checking her mobile phone and her general demeanour that screamed she was used to getting her own way, she was a successful businesswoman. The woman was looking quizzically over her mobile, her slender fingers idly moving over the screen while she lifted her head at regular intervals waiting for the train to arrive in the station. When the train pulled into the platform Harry got on after her. She didn't notice she had a stalker behind her who positioned himself right behind her in the cramped carriage. One of the beauties of the human brain and body was when they sensed big and small stimuli with their nerves, their brains instantly dismissing the smaller stimuli and concentrating on the larger.

On the section of the line they were travelling along, they were about to cross a junction and the trains on the Underground always shook themselves to pieces as a result. No-one was paying any attention - there were a few office workers, teenagers trying to chat up girls (Harry was reminded of Seamus Finnigan and his attempts to chat up girls, but he could see that here these guy's efforts were mediocre), three middle-aged women gossiping amongst themselves about something inane.

Harry was the only one who was not simply travelling, and he turned the back of his hand towards the woman in front of him and took hold of her purse in her handbag, relying on the wall of passengers and the woman's own preoccupation to snag it out of the handbag.

As the train swayed Harry gently let himself rock into her, making the woman turn herself around to look back at him in reflex but Harry shrugged as though it were not his fault the train was rocky, and he used that brief moment to poke around in her mind to find out where she lived and what she had, but he used the motion to pull the purse out of the handbag and deftly put it into his pocket. Ah, he loved handbags; they were so close to their owners but they were too far away from their owner for them to be aware of what he was doing. His fingers had brushed against familiar objects he'd drawn the purse out of the handbag. It was the woman's Oyster card wallet, but he left that alone. At the next station, he got off the train and hunched his shoulders like someone suffering from a particularly nasty cold.

As Harry joined the stream of weary people as they got off their trains and left the station, he stood outside the station and stood in a corner looking at all of them with a professional eye. on their own one person was bound to have a few bob in their wallets, but all of this lot combined were bound to have a few grand.

Harry spotted someone a short distance away that was smoking a cigarette. He had slicked back hair, a body that looked like he was trying hard to be a movie star and worked out, and while some of his clothes - jacket, jeans, and shirt were battered and frayed, his trainers were good quality. Harry ignored him and went into a McDonalds. The stench of coffee, sugar, happy meals hit him in the nose instantly, and Harry ignored them and headed for the toilets though he planned to buy an Apple pie after he was finished.

Entering a cubicle he locked it, and he sat on one of the seats and flicked his wand at the door with a minor ward to prevent anyone from looking too closely at the what he might be doing. Slipping on a pair of rubber gloves he kept in his smart coat - Harry didn't care about his clothes; one of the downsides of living with the Dursley family where the family of neanderthals made it their life mission to make sure that he never appreciated life, but when he had entered the magical world he had dressed in simple but stylish clothes; the magical world believed him to be a spoilt brat so why hide it? - he took out the wallets he had collected, and the purses.

In the last purse, he found a membership card to a male strip club, but he ignored that and pulled out a wad of notes and when he counted them up he found up to 200 pounds which he put in his own wallet. He found an American Express card, a few other bank cards, but he left them inside the purse since they would be too much hassle to sell. Besides by leaving them in the purse for the police to find when he posted the purse and the other wallets in half a dozen of the post boxes in the city the police would get them from Royal Mail and return them to their owners.

The rich mark's wallet was far more promising. Like the woman, he had a number of cards in his wallet and a driver's license, a gym membership card and a receipt for a fancy restaurant. There was also a picture of his family which Harry momentarily glanced at before putting it back into the wallet. The guy's wallet had at least a thousand pounds inside, and he took it all out and he pushed the money into his own wallet before he went through the other wallets.

One of the wallets came from someone with a seedier mindset than the banker. This guy had packets of LSD pills inside one of the pockets, a few club cards. Well, the guy could explain to the Old Bill about those when they caught up with him so it wasn't Harry's problem and a few membership cards for a few brothels and strip clubs. There were only a few hundred pounds inside the wallet, and he took them.

When Harry was finished he put all of the wallets inside a plastic bag he had in his pocket, and then he left the toilets and headed out of the McDonalds before he remembered he wanted an Apple pie.

* * *

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

I don't own Harry Potter.

For those of you who are confused, please tell me what you're confused about.

* * *

The Thief.

As he waited for a train to take him to Baker St, where he would then take the Tube close to the river where he lived, Harry thought about his week. It had been three days since he had stolen that purse and that wallet from the rich businesswoman and the other rich man who had been so awkward getting on public transport, and he had noted down the addresses of their homes in his diary. He would case the joints and get a better idea of what to expect so he could commit the burglaries from there.

Just because he had looked into their minds to get their addresses and an idea of what their homes contained, Harry still wanted to get a proper idea of the lie of the land with his own eyes, whether there were back alleys nearby or trees that his animagus form could take advantage of at some point. He wasn't bothered by the security alarms or anything stupid like that; many a burglar didn't care about that kind of thing anyway, why should they since most burglars were in and out in just a few minutes anyway, and the police would always need a few minutes anyway to get to the property in the first place, so win-win if you were quick and weren't idle.

Even neighbours, so-called friends didn't care. Harry had lost count of the number of times he'd come across a street where everyone kept themselves to themselves and they didn't care about the people living next to their homes and they wouldn't really care all that much about what was happening in a nearby house

As he waited for the train to arrive, Harry hefted his satchel over his shoulder. As a college student at the nearby St. George College where he was studying photography, art and Classical literature, Harry found it relatively easy to juggle his time as a pickpocket/burglar and a college student. Ever since he had left the magical world a couple of years ago while washing his hands of the whole lot of them, Harry had wanted to broaden his mind and open it up to new things after spending an hour going over the prospectuses of numerous London colleges.

St. George's college was the first college he had begun attending, but he might decide to go to others in the city later if this all worked out. He had been a Ravenclaw, after all, and he had loved knowledge ever since. He had loved the library in Little Whinging, it had been perhaps his only refuge and hideaway when he had needed it to escape from Dudley and his morons. The library had opened his mind to various subjects even if the knowledge contained within went out of date or some new fact came along that made the previous facts redundant or obsolete. Dudley and his parents had never been bothered about growing their knowledge, even though it was normal for people to read and enjoy a good book, but Dudley hated reading because he would have needed to sit still for a couple of hours and narrow his piggy little eyes on the pages, and there were times where he had wondered whether or not Dudley would ever learn how to read past primary level books.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had not been far behind, but truthfully he had never worked out why they thought it abnormal to read, but he didn't care. The Dursleys were long since gone, and truthfully as long as he never saw Marge Dursley ever again he didn't mind. Harry wondered what would happen if he did meet the bitch again who had enjoyed taunting him with that talk about breeding and how his parents were worthless.

Would she blame him for the loss of her 'hardworking' brother and his family? Probably, but he didn't care. She would probably claim he'd stolen the cash to buy his clothes, his supplies for college and that he would be a failure.

Thinking of college instantly pushed Marge out of his mind (truthfully he would have been happier if the woman had been around when the rest of the family had kicked the bucket, but you couldn't have everything), and he thought about the work he would need to do later.

It cost him a small fortune to pay for his tuition and other materials, but Harry wasn't bothered; in his mind, it was worth it.

True, he didn't really plan on really using the knowledge at the moment, but he wanted to do more with his life than leaving his townhouse and popping onto the Tube to pick a few pockets. Besides, he could always renovate a few of the rooms in his townhouse into a photographic lab and an artist's studio since both courses made him get in touch with his creativity.

One of the biggest problems Harry had found himself facing since he had killed Voldemort and the Death Eaters, especially after he had gone off on that genocidal rampage through the magical world after they had pushed him over the edge when they had murdered Luna and Xeno, was trying to work out what he wanted to do with his life. One of his better decisions as a twelve-year-old had been ensuring he maintained his muggle education - true, it had played hell with his life and his spare time, but he had made the decision under duress.

Harry closed his eyes for a second as he thought about how his life had changed when he had left the Dursleys, but it had truly changed when he had wiped his hands of the Wizarding world after Luna's death and became a full-time thief again. He had hoped by marrying Luna he could finally have a normal life with the woman he had loved.

Finally the train pulled into the station, and Harry joined the masses after getting out of his mood in one of the carriages, his eyes automatically scanning each of the passengers (typical really, he thought to himself in mild amusement - he'd had no intention of picking anybody's pocket on the trains he had to take today to get from the townhouse all the way to Edgeware Road, but old habits died hard), but he restrained the urge to sneak over to someone and steal their purses or their wallets.

At the next stop, Harry got off the train and walked the familiar route to the Tube stations below. Baker St. had ten platforms, and two of them were used by the Bakerloo line. Harry went down to the platform and waited for the train to arrive. As usual during the daytime, the platform was packed, and as a result of the terrible inadequate air conditioning, the air stank with the sweat of the passengers which mixed with the old musk of the platforms. It was just as bad when the train came in and Harry boarded it with a mental sigh when he saw the majority of the carriages were crammed full of people, and there was no where for him to sit. It was a good thing he was used to this, and knew that he would just have to be patient. Leaning against one of the walls near a set of double doors, Harry glanced out of the windows, but he knew what he'd see just as the train moved through the tunnel; a black, dark tube lined with iron rings and cables along the sides of the walls but as the train moved by so fast it would be virtually impossible to focus on all of it at once. Outside the sound of the train rushing through the tunnel echoed through the carriage.

Harry had seen and heard the sights of the London Underground tunnels ever since he was a kid and had managed to escape the Dursleys and so he looked away, when he looked around the carriage he saw a man who seemed almost to be in a trance. Puzzlement turned to curiosity, and Harry stepped closer. The man had his eyes half closed as he was groping a woman's body.

The moment Harry saw what he was doing he rolled his eyes. He had seen his fair share of perverts on the Tube in his time. In his mind guys like this fell into two groups, there were those who ordinary, boring people who had perverted tendencies, and then there were those so swallowed up by their perversion the ordinary lines between fantasy and reality were so blurred it was impossible to see the edge. Looking at the man groping the woman, Harry imagined he belonged to the second category.

The woman shifted, trying to physically move him away from her, and Harry saw her more clearly now. It wasn't a woman, it was a schoolgirl who couldn't have been older than 13 or so, and she was shorter than the pervert by the head. But it was her hair that caught Harry's attention. It was blonde, and it was a few shades away from the kind Luna had. Anger surged through him (he had to hold back the urge to lash out; his magical control had always been turbulent before Croaker taught him the mind arts to help him reinforce control, and while he always practiced occlumency, it wasn't impossible for some magic to leak out through the cracks, and the last thing he wanted was something to happen in this metal tube under the ground, with all of these muggles down here, especially since the magical world believed he was dead aside from Croaker and the goblins, presumably), and he headed in the direction of the pervert and the girl. No one had noticed anything of course, and as he had to gently push the passengers out of the way, eliciting annoyed glares, Harry wondered why it was always him that noticed things like this.

The tight confines of the carriage and the number of bodies between him and the pervert and the girl made it harder for Harry to get a better look of the girls' face, but he could tell from her body language and the muffled protests she wanted the guy to leave her alone. From behind, Harry grabbed the man's left wrist with his own left hand. Through the grip, Harry felt the muscles in the man's wrist jerk into life before it went limp, as though the man had just felt a sudden electric shock.

Or he had just been jolted back into reality where he was in a public place and someone had noticed him. Briefly, Harry scanned him while he restrained the urge to either deck the guy and break his face, or just try to pick his pocket here and now, but he restrained both urges though he was really tempted. The guy was in his mid-thirties, he guessed and judging by his clothes he worked in an 'Itsu' restaurant which sold Asian themed meals, and there was a ring on his finger indicating he was married. Harry wondered what this guys wife would think if she happened to see what her hubby was doing, but he didn't care, he wasn't a marriage counsellor.

The man's face had drained of all its colour as he realised what had just happened and he struggled to turn towards Harry, twisting his neck around while the train moved. Looking past the pervert towards the girl, Harry could see she'd clearly noticed that something had changed and she had turned her own head around to look, but she was clearly nervous about completely turning around.

The man opened his mouth to speak, but Harry didn't give him a chance since he didn't know what the man would say. He didn't know if the pervert would scream or shout about the injustices of being stopped groping the girl, but there was no way he was going to let him get the chance to go that far.

Sweat was rolling down the man's face, his cheeks were covered by beads of perspiration as they rolled down forming salty rivers and his eyes were wide and unfocused as he waited for whatever Harry had in mind for him.

But the expression on the man's face took the young pickpocket by surprise, and Harry could almost smell the fear wafting around the man, and idly he wondered if his own face would mirror that expression if he was caught. Pushing the thought out of his mind, Harry leaned forwards as the train entered the next station, and he hissed, "Go! Get off the train."

The man stood there as still as a statue as if his brain were a computer that needed programming, but Harry made an irritated sound and jerked his head irritably, and the man ran off the train, pushing other passengers aside as they came and went.

Inside the carriage, Harry turned to face the girl now he could see her clearly enough without the pervert's body getting in the way. While her hair and general build reminded her of Luna, there was no resemblance between the two. Harry swallowed in revulsion because although he had helped the girl and stopped a pervert, he had bene seen. Harry turned away from the girl and she didn't call out or say thank you.

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000

The townhouse had apparently been given to Lily and James Potter as a wedding present from Lily's parents. Similarly Number 4 Privet Drive had been a present to Petunia; the Evanses had been successful with their investments which had been carefully made over the years to ensure their daughters received the best startups in life. It had been during that mess with the Tri-wizard tournament where the rules of the competition had basically said he was an adult that he had learnt about the townhouses' existence.

The marauders hadn't known about the townhouse which was perhaps one of the only reasons why the place still stood because if Wormtail had known about it, then the Death Eaters would have destroyed the place. The townhouse was purely muggle, but James and Charles Potter, his grandfather, had all gone in to place wards and other basic protections over the property.

James had lived in the townhouse because his parents had lived in Potter manor, but Harry didn't know the full details.

At first he had been wary of the property, and it had nothing to do with the fact it had once been his parent's home. It was the similarity to Privet Drive that had gotten to him, but he had pushed that away; the Evanses had not known that the property they had thoughtfully provided for Vernon and Petunia would one day be used as a prison of abuse both physical and mental on one of their own grandchildren, and they couldn't have known that Petunia would have transferred her hatred of magic from Lily onto a helpless baby who'd lost his parents. Once he had pushed that away, it had been easy to get into the place and make a home.

Harry had been relieved to have a place he could finally call home. In first and second year, he'd been forced to doss in places where he knew he wouldn't be disturbed. Dumbledore had tried to make him go back to Privet Drive more than once. Despite all of his strengths, the elderly wizard just did not listen, and he had kept trying to get him back to the Dursleys.

It had been a relief when he had found out about the townhouse because he had been so heartily sick and tired of being a hermit, or a nomad. The townhouse still had the ward scheme Charles and James had placed on it years ago, but he had moved the majority of magical items to different rooms in an attempt to keep both worlds at bay. They were already separated so what was the point in trying to break with tradition?

When Harry arrived at the townhouse, he was absolutely tired from his journey. After taking off his shoes and going to the kitchen to brew some coffee in the kitchen, he sat down while the beans were ground to powder and he poured water. He bought his beans from coffee shops since he believed they had the best flavourings compared to the crap you got in supermarkets.

After pouring in milk and some sugar, he took it into the living room and slowly drank his coffee. He had a long night ahead of him, and he needed to get some rest.

0000000000000000000000000000000000000

Hopping onto his motorbike after he had eaten dinner, Harry headed for the businesswoman's he'd met on the Tube. He'd inherited the motorcycle from his godfather Sirius Black after the former convict of Azkaban had been kissed by the Dementors during his third year. Severus Snape, a long time enemy of Sirius and a child in a man's body, had gotten his wish; he had eliminated one of his biggest tormentors at school, showing just how petty the greasy haired teacher was.

Harry was long since over Sirius's demise, though he'd had lots of fun rubbing it into Fudge's face when he had brought in Pettigrew's shattered body with its broken spine which would stop the little bastard going anywhere, and he had gotten his revenge on Snape.

Some people might ask him if they knew that he used public transport why he didn't use the motorbike that often. The truth was he did use it, sometimes frequently when he didn't want to subject himself to the misery of public transport or because he had wanted to get to college quickly, or just around the city without needing to go underground.

But he needed the Tube. So many people used it, and because of how cramped the deep level trains could get, it was sinful of pickpockets to not really use it.

Harry was a pickpocket, and working on the Tube where many of the passengers were tourists or wealthy people, but there was a more sentimental reason; Sirius had represented a chance for him to live his life normally without constantly going into care, or otherwise being ambushed by the Dursleys.

And then the chance was ripped out of his hands.

Every single year Dumbledore would stress the need for him to go to the Dursleys and the old fool was clearly out of it because he had been delusional when he had said the Dursleys missed him and he shouldn't have run off the way he had. It was clear he didn't have a clue.

Harry had never trusted Dumbledore, believing him to be too cagey for his own good and not being the most qualified individual to be a 'general' of any kind, but Harry's distrust of the old wizard had shot up when he defended Snape's actions that night. In the end, it had been easier for Harry to just ignore the two men even if he had seriously restrained the urge more than once to break Snape's neck because of the sneers and smug leers sent in his direction. You would think that if you wanted to suck up to the wizard 'supposedly' behind Voldemort's 'demise' you would be more supportive of him than a useless Death Eater.

But there were good points. First of all, Sirius had written in his will about a year before the Potters were murdered and he himself was sent to Azkaban for something that he hadn't done that his godson, Harry Potter, was his heir and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Lucius Malfoy had been furious, he had long wanted to use his son to claim the Black family fortune and titles and plunder them, but Harry put an end to that. There was nothing the blonde family could do about it, but Harry had gone further. He disowned Narcissa and Draco and warned them that if they pushed him again, he would make them pay.

Croaker had not been happy about that since it would bring too much attention to himself, but Harry had sweetened the deal by giving him access to the Black family collections, and their contacts. They found one of Voldemort's Horcruxes inside the Black family home, but that was easy to dispose of.

Harry took a deep breath and slid on his helmet and before long he was ripping through the streets of London. It may have been easier to simply fly, but since he was trying to live a mostly magic frugal life it wasn't a good idea.

It was s long way to the businesswoman's home and he could see why she preferred using the Tube since there was a station over a block away from her flat. It was in a trendier part of the city. Once he arrived, Harry got off his motorcycle and looked around the area. Using Notice-Me-Not spells, Harry was able to walk around unseen as he got a feel for the place, trying to find decent short-cuts to the Tube station. Once he was finished, he headed for the block of flats the woman lived in.

Using magic once more to open the doors and shut down the muggle security, Harry walked through the building. As approached the flat number where the woman lived, Harry noticed the opulence of the place and wondered just how many other wealthy muggles lived in the block before he arrived at the door leading into the woman's flat.

"Homenum revelio," he whispered.

The spell came back positive. The woman was inside the flat, but he wasn't bothered though it made his life difficult. Flicking his wand again, Harry opened the door, casting a second spell to keep it silent and then closed it silently in turn. He could hear distant sounds of music and singing playing in one of the rooms, but the main rooms of the flat were empty.

It was a two-storey flat, but the place was done up lovely in tones of rich blue and white.

Although he saw a few Things on the ground floor which would be straightforward enough to sell, Harry didn't see anything substantial and he gave up on the bottom floor and he headed upstairs. The sound of singing was much louder now even if it was a bit muted until he arrived outside a room where the sound of music and singing was intermixed with the sounds of running water. The businesswoman was in the bathroom, either having a bath or more likely a shower.

Harry paused outside for only a moment before he walked off and found the bedroom, and from there it didn't take too long for him to find the jewellery collection, but he left it alone. There would be plenty of time for that later, he had come to the flat to see the place for himself. Now he had and he was satisfied.

By the time the woman had left the bathroom after towelling herself dry, Harry was gone.

000000000000000000000000000000

In contrast, the businessman and his family didn't live in a flat. They lived in an affluent house in one of London's trendier neighbourhoods, and like most places in London there was a Tube station nearby so he could easily do the job and get out without anyone being any the wiser about what he'd been up to, or he could just use the motorcycle. But there was plenty of time to get everything sorted into his mind.

Harry smirked under his helmet as he approached. Traffic was murder, at least for the muggles but since the motorcycle had been augmented with runes and enchantments, it was child's play for him to simply slip through the traffic and bypass the pedestrians as though they weren't even there. No-one noticed him, the notice-me-not spells applied to the cycle and activated when he had pressed the booster control rendered him virtually invisible.

When he had reached the neighbourhood, Harry drew on the first mark's memories and knowledge that he'd copied when he had performed the legilimency probe on the Tube to help him find an inconspicuous spot to park the motorcycle.

Once he'd stopped the engine, he jumped off still wearing his black leathers and motorcycle helmet before slipping it off his head and placing it on the saddle. Taking out his wand, Harry cast a few basic wards to discourage muggles from approaching and stopping them from stealing the motorcycle before he left on foot while he cast a few spells over himself to stop himself from being noticed.

Harry walked around the neighbourhood for two hours, checking every side street near to the property as he could, trying to determine the best ways to reach the house if he wanted to go in on foot or not. In his mind, Harry charted his progress while ideas came and went. Finally, he headed back to the property, taking a packet of chocolate buttons out of his pocket and slipping a few into his mouth as he did before he closed his eyes for a second so he could focus.

A moment later, a large male black cat with vivid emerald green eyes was padding down the streets and slipped down the alleyway the bin-men would use to pick up the rubbish since no wealthy neighbourhood would want their streets bunged up with black bags. The dim lighting of the alley made it hard for a human to pick out anything, but for a cat it was much better. For instance, Harry knew that to his right was a broken bottle, he could smell the stale alcohol in the air, and see the sharp shards before he decided he had had enough of the alley, and decided to take a look up above so he could get a better idea of what he was dealing with.

Harry came to a stop, and mentally willing the feline part to take control, he crouched down and leapt up into the air and let the sheathed claws in his paws come out and grip the wood of the fence to pull himself up and using the superior sense of balance of a cat he padded along the narrow top of the fence towards the property. As he walked, Harry looked judgementally down at the neat gardens that he passed by. In his human form, he might have sneered or shaken his head with a roll of his eyes, but in his cat form, he just looked judgementally down at the gardens. Why did some muggles have to make their gardens look like a prize at a flower show? What was the point, where was the imagination? His own garden looked more like an overgrown jungle, which wasn't unusual since it had been years since his parents had lived in the townhouse and no-one had taken care of it, and when he had arrived he had only done the barest minimum needed to care for it though really no-one noticed since the spells on the property prevented his neighbour's from tutting at the state of the place.

But while his mind was full of memories of the Dursleys and the rest of the snobbish pigs in Little Whinging who had little better to do with their time than to gossip and judge anyone who didn't fit the mould of what they considered 'respectable,' Harry was also wondering if the people here were rich enough to burgle. They must have loads of lovely Things in their homes, but he remained focused on his target. Sitting at the back of the garden on the fence, Harry studied the property. In the dim lighting there were plenty of shadows, so he once more surrendered to the instincts of his inner cat, and he jumped down and padded gently towards them, but as he did Harry suddenly let out a startled hiss as the water sprinklers came on and sprayed him.

A woman came out of the house with a teenage girl behind her. Both of them jeered as he retreated into the shadows.

"Come to pee in our garden did you?" The woman jeered as he rushed out, but the girl had something in her hand which she threw at Harry. Her aim was awful, but it impacted the ground with a gentle crush to the immaculately mowed lawn. It was a Coca-Cola can, and she called out obscenities that mixed with her mothers' while he retreated out of sight until they went back inside. With some of his fur wet, Harry paused to catch his breath and he glared at the house angrily

00000000000000000000000000

It was late by the time Harry returned to his townhouse. He had stayed in the bushes of the rich family's home for over an hour, careful not to go anywhere near the lawn and checked the place out before he returned to his motorcycle and returned to his real human form and returned home. After taking a shower and brushing his teeth Harry went to bed. In the morning he prepared breakfast and made preparations to go out to college. As he ate he thought back on the night before, and he thought about the two marks and decided to get started on writing notes on the train to work out the best ways to burgle their homes and take their Things.

As he did he also thought of ways to burgle the neighbours, and as he did his mind wandered to the memory of the neat gardens he'd come across that reminded him vividly of Little Whinging. It was ironic, he had worked long and hard to escape from there and yet there were constant reminders of what miserable part of his life intruding on the life he had made.

He had left the Dursleys shortly after discovering he could change his appearance. Vernon had smacked him in the face, leaving behind a bruise and swelled skin. Harry had taken one look at it in the mirror before he had grimaced. He had learnt to dislike his physical appearance at the Dursleys, and as he had looked at himself, thinking how ridiculous he looked with his messy black hair, pale skin and pointed chin, and the swelling on his cheek and he wished he had a completely different face…. maybe dark blonde hair, grey eyes, and more healthy skin with a bit of a tan instead of his pasty skin which was a result of his time spent incarcerated in that bloody cupboard under the stairs.

His appearance changed after he closed his eyes and thought about it, wishing he looked different. Harry remembered his understandable reaction, jumping back like that and almost falling on his backside but he had managed to control himself before he pinched himself when he went into the denial stage before he realised it wasn't an illusion at all. The next moment he was experimenting with new appearances before he changed his face back to his original, complete with the swelling. His body's healing factor always worked fast anyway, so he wasn't worried about that.

Harry continued to experiment, in secret, with this new ability. He wasn't sure at the time if he was a mutant like one of those comic book characters Dudley and his idiot thugs liked to read, but at the time he didn't know he was a partial metamorphamagus.

After a few weeks of practice, he learnt that although he could change his face he could not change the rest of his body, but that wasn't a problem in the long run.

But still the Dursleys hated him. Looking back on them now, especially after what he'd learnt after he had finally managed to gain entry to the Potter family vaults where his mother's diaries had been secreted (ooh, that had been naughty of Dumbledore to overlook the fact the Tri-wizard tournament would essentially make him an adult in the eyes of the magical world), his aunt had simply become jealous because her sister had a power she didn't have.

Harry didn't know what Vernon had, but he guessed that like a Nazi he hated anything and everyone different from himself. After spending a few weeks trying to avoid Dudley's traps and Vernon's attacks, and failing, Harry had decided it was time to leave the Dursleys.

00000000000000000000000000000

 _They were almost late at the school, but that was normal because Dudley didn't like school and hated learning. In his mind, a school was a boring place, boring teachers telling him what to do and telling him to constantly sit down, and they even told him when he could eat. As a result, Dudley usually always dug his heels in and it was only because of his mother's promises for presents that he went to school in the first place, but they always went in late._

 _Harry didn't mind, especially today since he would be leaving the Dursleys behind though he couldn't do it right now since Aunt Petunia constantly twisted her long neck to see if he had run off - it was that kind of timing that had made Harry reluctant to even bother trying to this type of thing, but soon it would be time._

" _MUMM! I don't wanna go to School!" Dudley whined._

 _Aunt Petunia let out a small sigh of frustration, and Harry understood why. She loved her son, she did, but that didn't stop her from knowing how unruly and destructive his tantrums could be. Harry tuned out her meaningless promises even as he kept an eye on her son he didn't bump into her from behind - he wanted to escape, the last thing that he wanted to do was set her off for no good reason at this point._

 _When they arrived at the school, everyone in the playground was gone, and Harry mentally groaned. Dudley had been digging in his heels for another five minutes, so that meant the pair of them would have to report their lateness. Again._

 _Aunt Petunia bent down and gave her tubby son a kiss. "Be good today, Diddy, and I will buy you what you want, okay?"_

 _When the woman turned to her nephew, her lips pursed over her horse-like teeth. "Boy," she spat before she walked off._

 _Harry didn't bother watching her go, he was more interested in what Dudley was going to do next. The boy's watery, beady eyes were glinting maliciously in his direction._

" _Come on, Harry," Dudley said, putting more stress on his name than was necessary, and waving him on so then he could go first. Harry mentally snorted. Dudley had a long way to go and had an awful lot to learn if he wanted to know how to be subtle. Dudley blinked as he realised that his favourite victim wasn't taking the bait, and his face became tinged with red with anger. The fat fool probably thought his plan would work, but Harry wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to fool for it, it was too obvious, and besides if he went in first then Dudley would be right behind him, a barrier of fat._

" _You'll get yours later, and when we get back home, Freak!" Dudley ground out, dropping his act and lumbered in through the gates reluctantly._

 _Harry sneered after him. "Privet drive is not my home," he whispered clearly, though at the time he had no idea what kind of consequence his words would have in the future._

" _What was that, Freak?" Dudley said from in front, but he didn't turn around, sure that his idiot cousin would be following but Harry ignored him, and waited for Dudley to get to a safe distance before he looked left and right in case there was someone nearby, watching, and when he was sure there wasn't anyone there, Harry backed out of the school gates and ran out and ducked behind a car and moved along the short line of cars so he was more or less out of sight of anyone watching from the school. When he reached the end of the road, he ran as fast as he could so he could put some distance between himself and the school._

 _Finally, he came to a trash-strewn alleyway and he rested against the wall for a second, and he closed his eyes to take a deep breath._

" _Privet Drive is not my home. Little Whinging is not my home. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia are not my relatives," he said softly, his breathing hoarse as his throat felt like someone had rubbed it with sandpaper. Closing his eyes tightly, he focused on his appearance and he changed his hair to a dark brown and gave himself some brown eyes._

 _Once his appearance was changed and his features became more fuller rather than thin and deliberately making himself look much older than he was in real life, he opened his backpack. Instead of books, a set of Dudley's old clothes were in the pack, and he donned them quickly. He was planning on changing them in a short time, they were the smallest clothes he could find at the moment so they'd do for now. In the meantime, he needed to get some food and water and head off into London with the money he had stolen from Vernon and Mrs Figg; stealing from the Dursleys varied from one person to the next. Dudley was the easiest since Aunt Petunia unintentionally gave him access to Dudley's bedroom, which meant he would have access to Dudley's piggy bank and the jar he had on the side which had all the notes he collected from bullying the kids at school, though some of the cash was strewn around the room, and as long as Harry was careful then neither Dudley nor Petunia would think he'd stolen anything._

 _For Aunt Petunia it was more difficult - she wasn't as thoughtless as her son or husband, she guarded her purse zealously, and he had needed to sneak out of his cupboard to get to it and grab a pound coin, but only a pound or else she would notice. Petunia always kept more than a few handfuls of cash on her when she went out in case of an emergency._

 _By contrast, Vernon was both as careful as his wife, and yet unbelievably stupid like his son. He guarded his wallet at all times by keeping it in his pocket even when he was indoors, and there was no way Harry could reach it. Not that he'd have the opportunity anyway, but some of the loose change he had in his pockets slipped from the pockets, and down into the armchair. After that, it was easy to take. Aunt Petunia should never have given him the job of cleaning the living room. Out of all of them, Mrs Figg was the easiest to steal from, whenever the stupid old bat Donning his coat to cover the worst of the bagginess of his outfit, he headed for the railway station where he got a single for London._

 _It wasn't until he was off the train when it reached London that he allowed himself a brief sigh of relief._

000000000000000000000000000000000

It had been an anticlimactic escape, Harry mused to himself, getting away from the Dursleys like that but his life was far from sun and roses. He spent a year on the streets of London, learning how to scrape for food and water. He also learnt how to pick people's pockets, and went around with gangs for a bit, learning how to avoid being busted by the Old Bill, and learning how to take advantage of the Tube to pick people's pockets. He remembered all those times he went out with different partners to either serve as a distractor or the one to pick the person's pocket or handbag for some cash.

And then he had decided he'd had enough. He had allowed himself to be caught, wearing the disguise he had kept once he had changed it around when he had arrived in London, and he had given a false name of Jack Silver though it hadn't fooled Hogwarts when the letter came.

But in the intervening years, Harry had used the opportunity his new identity had given him to make a fresh start, and since no-one would imagine that Jack Silver was, in fact, Harry Potter, the two boys didn't even look alike, so no-one made the connection.

Harry shrugged and looked at the clock before he jumped up, damn it, he needed to get going. He would make the plans to burgle his marks from the other day, and hopefully, by the end see if he needed to plunder the Things in the other houses he'd seen.


	3. Chapter 3

The Thief.

Oh, so many lovely Things, Harry thought to himself as his kleptomaniac greed began to surface as he walked through the businesswoman's flat. He had already taken the jewellery out of the bedroom, and now he was looking for anything else the woman owned that he could flog quickly. He found her CD collection, and he levitated them all into the mokeskin bag he had on his person.

As he looked around the flat, he grabbed a few more Things and put them in the bag. A small collection of ornaments went inside the bag, though he was constantly checking his watch as well as the web of spells he'd placed on the door to alert him in case the businesswoman returned. He wasn't worried; he could take care of her if she entered unexpectedly.

Harry wasn't in the flat for long. He was only trying to make this look good while he made sure to find all the best places where the woman's money was hidden - his original visit might have given him the layout of the flat which let him know where the bedroom was, but everyone had different places to hide their cash.

Some favoured hiding them in a wardrobe amongst shoeboxes or stuffed inside old and musty coats. The businesswoman seemed content with keeping her money in a box in her desk, and Harry was pleased she was consistent, but as he worked he ruefully realised he may not be able to burgle everyone in this block of flats, as soon as the businesswoman realised what had happened she would raise the alarm. For ordinary thieves that would be a problem, but as long as Harry had his wand then he could effortlessly break into people's homes. After all, that was one of the top reasons he had quickly wanted to go to Hogwarts, to learn the best ways of using the wand.

He didn't care about any other kind of life other than that of a thief, and despite the battery of tests Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix put him through, the feud between himself and Voldemort which had been one-sided in Harry's mind, because the Dark Lord was, at least to him before that mess in his Fourth year and what Voldemort had done later on to Luna and Xeno, nothing more than a pest.

Harry had just wanted to be left alone to his own devices, he had just wanted to do a few things; firstly, he wanted to crack the secrets of becoming an Animagus, secondly, he wanted to figure out what he was going to do with his crush on Luna Lovegood, whether he wanted to settle down with her and begin a family, thirdly, he needed a plan to deal with Dumbledore once and for all since all of the yearly 'tests' geared for him were becoming increasingly life-threatening, and fourthly he needed to stop Voldemort.

He didn't care about the Magical world.

He only cared for two people - Luna and Xeno; he had met dozens of witches and wizards during his time at Hogwarts. It was sad but it was telling that he had only trust for two.

Harry's lack of trust for too many people had begun early when he had learnt how no-one seemed to care he had not only been orphaned, but he had been forced to escape the Dursleys and grew up rough.

Croaker, Amelia Bones, Albus Dumbledore, Fudge…. they were all the same. Croaker was included on the list because he had known the whole time what was happening, but he hadn't done anything, but Harry had trusted him to a small degree because Croaker had been the only wizard to not only admit to him he'd known about the Dursley's abuse and how he'd escaped from them to live on the streets but he hadn't done anything because the Unspeakables were forbidden to interfere unless for good reason. The fact a child was orphaned and then later abused and then forced to go on the run didn't rank as a good reason.

But Croaker had redeemed himself, something Dumbledore, the Order of the Phoenix, Fudge, and Amelia Bones had never done.

Once Harry was finished with the flat, he closed his eyes and apparated out of the flat, and he reappeared next to his motorcycle and he slid onto it and adjusted his bag to make it more secure before he started the engine up and headed towards the other house on the list.

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000

The biggest contrasts between the two he'd pickpocketed was the man had a wife and a clearly spoilt brat of a daughter. The wife had a virtual wall full of jewellery. Harry flicked his wand over the boxes and sent the brightly coloured boxes of the collection into the mokeskin bag, knowing they would soon fetch a very fine price. Once the jewellery belonging to the wife was in the bag, he left the bedroom after making a basic sweep to make sure there wasn't anything else in the bedroom that he couldn't pinch. Once he had placed the last few Things into the bag, he went to the daughter's bedroom.

The moment he stepped over the threshold into the room, he grimaced at the lurid pink decor of the walls. Everything in the room was so bright, pink walls and white furniture…. but the posters of various boy bands showed that this was the bedroom of a teenage girl though he was not sure how old the girl was, nor did it matter.

Like her mother, the girl had a very large collection of jewellery, but the daughter had a lot more Things than her mother. For one thing, she had a vast number of expensive clothes, handbags, and shoes. Harry studied them for a moment. He had plenty of contacts and tactics that he could use to flog them, and get a bit of cash out of the proceeds but truthfully Harry wasn't sure if it was a good move. The bag he was carrying could carry tons, but truthfully he didn't want to take too much in case the Old Bill took too much notice. He wasn't scared of the police, not while he was a wizard and could make the evidence simply disappear, but he had grown up on the streets and had learnt how to be cautious. That caution had kept him alive in a world that he didn't understand.

Harry looked at the fur coats almost regretfully and then he turned his back, closing the wardrobe behind him and then carried on with the rest of the heist. After he was finished with the bedrooms, he went to the bathroom and checked the cabinets for drugs. He found a few and he took them off the shelves and put them gently into the bag, his mind calculating what he could get for some of them. He wasn't concerned about the drugs, knowing that the person they were prescribed for could get more, though he kept an eye out in case any of the drugs were important medicines. There were two, so he kept them on the shelf. He was not completely heartless.

As he worked, he cast his mind back to when he first met Croaker….

 _Harry sometimes wondered why he bothered._

 _It was bad enough he had stuck his neck out for the magical world and for Hogwarts after he had endured weeks of abuse simply because everyone believed he was the one behind the attacks on the castle before he had had enough of the never-ending staring, and he had sworn on a magical oath he had had nothing to do with the attacks._

 _Seriously, how stupid did they think he was?_

 _If he was truly behind the attacks on the muggleborns at the school, why would he draw attention to himself? At first, he hadn't cared, but he was still kicking himself for revealing he could speak to snakes. He was a Ravenclaw and as a result he liked knowledge and finding out where he could find it. Unfortunately, his studies were directed towards didn't avenues. Harry was not bothered by the silly prejudices in the magical world, to him they were boring and pointless, and that attitude had come back to slap him in the face._

 _But the attacks intrigued him nonetheless, so he had investigated though truthfully he didn't care much about those who were attacked, at least until Luna had been petrified, and afterwards he had gone on a rampage to find out who the Heir of Slytherin was (he actually found the idea of an Heir and a monster a bit too melodramatic for his tastes, but then again the magical world was full of idiots who would go for that type of thing), and he had fought it in the Chamber of Secrets itself._

 _Harry had shown the memory of the encounter to the entire school so then that senile old fool Dumbledore wouldn't try to brush the whole mess under the rug where it would be forgotten. He had also shown off other events to the school for them to see; Lockhart's attempt to wipe his memory when he had gone there in good faith hoping to make the fop redeem himself._

 _It was obvious to anyone with some sense and a drop of curiosity Lockhart was a con-artist and not a very bright one. Most of the con-artists he'd encountered over the years while he'd run with those gangs had the common-sense to NOT open their mouths and boast, never mind show off their spoils, but since the magical world was stupid he managed to get away with it, at least until he'd smashed that lantern over his head._

 _When he had reached the Chamber, Ginny Weasley, the stupid girl who had been watching him, falling all over herself whenever he was around, was lying unconscious on the ground. And then the most extraordinary part of the entire thing happened._

 _Harry narrowed his eyes, knowing that Dumbledore would never explain to him how the shade of Lord Voldemort as his teenage self, Tom Marvolo Riddle, came to be. One minute he was checking the stupid redheaded girl to see if she was alright, though he'd known she was anything but alright - it had been as though she were dying._

 _The next…. He was having a talk with the younger version of the bastard who had murdered his parents, a talk that was both revealing and yet boring; Harry didn't care about Voldemort's sob story for a life, even though there were similarities between the pair of them but what he couldn't understand was simple; if his life was so bad why did he not bother to simply turn his back and make a different life? It had worked for him, but maybe Tom Riddle was just as useless and pathetic as he was as Lord Voldemort._

 _A sound outside brought him out of his thoughts, but the door didn't open._

 _The office he was in was empty, but after being a wizard at a truly weird and dangerous school for two years, he was unsure if he was being watched. He didn't care either. The office was creepy, but he wasn't bothered. The walls were dark, and the only light sources in the room came from a few candles in clusters, highlighting the illuminated and moving maps and pages here and there. There were jars full of dark preservatives, but he had no idea what they were preserving, nor did he care. Probably something unpleasant._

 _What struck him the most was the lack of any personal item in the office. It was as though the owner of the office had gone out of his or her way to keep the place as utilitarian as possible._

 _Harry frowned as he recalled how he had ended up here. Ever since last year when he had learnt it was Dumbledore was behind his placement with the Dursleys, he had found that the old man wanted him with that bunch. It was lucky he had been behind some of the taller muggleborns, and so picking out the Dursley's distinctive forms was easy. The years had not been kind to the Dursleys, but then again Vernon's obesity and Petunia's bitterness were both ugly traits and aged them badly as a consequence._

 _He had changed his appearance and he had sneaked onto one of the nearer trains, confident that the Dursleys expected him to be just the same as he had been when he'd fled them, and he had just moved down the train and got off and hurried out of the station behind them._

 _Dumbledore may have tried playing the same trick a second time, so Harry had decided to fly off the train as it reached King's Cross. He had purchased a broomstick for himself, a Cleansweep 10 (he could have purchased one of the Nimbus broomsticks, but he had decided against it - he didn't play Quidditch and had no interest in the so-called sport, so he didn't need it.) and fly off the train after checking his things and his clothes for unwanted spells._

 _Unfortunately, he didn't have the chance to get off the train, because he had been grabbed from behind before it had turned dark, and he had woken up to find himself in this office and judging from the time on his watch he had been here for two hours already._

 _The door opened and Harry jumped in surprise before he got a grip over himself, and he turned to find a man who looked fairly old dressed in dark robes - he wasn't sure if they were a dark grey or just black, but they looked coarse and a bit ragged._

" _Ah, Mr Potter," the wizard said, "it is agreeable to finally meet you at last."_

" _Who are you? Why am I here?" Harry asked while he tried to keep his expression and voice calm._

 _The old wizard chuckled. "My name is Algernon Croaker, and you are presently inside my Department in the Ministry of Magic, the Department of Mysteries to be precise."_

" _Why am I here?"_

" _An enquiring mind, eh? I like that," Croaker's smile faded a little. "Your adventures this past year have made you famous, Mr Potter. But it was the memory you showed of the Dark Lord in his teenage form that has brought you here."_

" _What do you mean?"_

 _Croaker was silent for a moment. "We have known for a long time about your ability to think outside the box, Mr Potter, though considering how you escaped your relatives and discovered your ability to change your appearance, partially; it's not as impressive as a full-change, but that doesn't matter."_

" _Hold on, you mean you've been spying on me, all this time?" Harry whispered before the implications sparked in his mind. "You….. you knew I was being abused by the Dursleys?"_

 _In the past, he would never have admitted that. Not to a soul; Luna seemed to know, but she was more perceptive than most, but he had little idea how she did it._

 _But he was willing to break the rule here because he had tried in the past to make Dumbledore see that his precious Dursleys were nothing more than savage animals who believed they were normal but were actually duller than a bucket of muddy ditch water, but because this guy had all but admitted to him that the abuse was only a step away from being public and no-one would give a damn._

 _Harry had already known his impression of the magical world was awful - the lies told in those stupid 'Harry Potter adventure books' and those so-called facts about him usually ended up being used as toilet paper for him._

 _Harry wanted to get out of here. He didn't want to be around someone who not only knew about the abuse he'd suffered, he didn't give a damn what he wanted. He just wanted to get out of here, right now._

 _Unfortunately, the other wizard seemed to know what he was thinking, and he stiffened. "Believe me, Mr Potter, it was not like that. We would have retrieved you -"_

" _And then you would have sent me back, on Dumbledore's orders!" Harry finished for him._

" _No," Croaker ground out, clearly on the edge of losing his patience but the younger wizard didn't care. "Albus Dumbledore does not have any authority in these walls; some of the Department would listen to him, but that is simply because Dumbledore is a highly respected wizard, but he doesn't have any authority to that degree. Besides, Dumbledore can't send you back there-," he said._

" _Hold on, Dumbledore has been trying to send me back to the Dursleys for the past two years; they were waiting for me at the station last year, so how can I not go back?" Harry asked, momentarily pushing his loathing for Croaker out of his mind for the time being as this news hit him. He hadn't expected it._

 _Croaker sighed. "For a long time, we watched you, and more than once we tried to intervene; the Dursley's abuse of you was not unique, too many young witches and wizards out there in the muggle world are injured or feared by muggles who simply don't understand what is happening. But we couldn't. Dumbledore had placed you under protective wards based off of the blood you share with your aunt and your mother, and as long as you would consider the place home then you were safe."_

 _Harry scowled. "I would never call that dump home!" he hissed._

" _We know. The Blood Wards deteriorated not long after your arrival so Dumbledore needed to find another way to reinforce them, but we couldn't approach the property," Croaker replied._

" _Why were you so interested? I don't get the feeling that you care one way or another about my welfare, or how others in the same position feel, so why bother?" Harry asked._

 _He had no idea how Croaker took the accusation he didn't care about child abuse though truthfully he didn't give a damn if he offended the older wizard. Croaker's face was unreadable. He was beginning to gain a slow hatred for the Ministry of Magic because he was beginning to wonder and ask himself just how many others knew about what the Dursleys and others like them were doing to him and to others._

" _We were interested because you were the only survivor of the Killing Curse-," Croaker said, but he was cut off as Harry let out a loud, rude, drawn out fake yawn._

" _I've heard this before," he said quietly, his tone completely bored and uncaring if he offended his so-called host. "Get to the point."_

 _Croaker nodded, but Harry caught a flash of anger in the older wizard's eyes before it vanished. "Our options were open when you were growing up, but because of the wards Dumbledore put up around the Dursley's property we couldn't get close, but when you escaped we were able to keep a watch over you. We were surprised when you became a thief, but it wasn't much of one since you would need to learn how to survive."_

 _Harry said nothing. He wasn't going to justify himself to anyone. If the Wizarding world had wanted him to be pure, lily-white, then they should have been more responsible and actually stepped in to mitigate the abuse, or at least make sure he was raised as a wizard._

" _We were always prepared to retrieve you," Croaker went on, sensing Harry wanted to hear more. "But you thrived in the muggle world without the Dursley's holding you back, and because you entered muggle foster care under a different name, we quickly saw just how resourceful you were."_

" _Flattery will get you nowhere. What do you want? You've had years by the sound of it to help but you haven't, what's peaked your interest now?"_

" _We have wanted to know more about how you survived the Killing Curse, but over the years we saw you using your gifts in order to survive. In return, you were able to grow into a person, and you have become a powerful young wizard."_

 _Harry looked at him in surprise and a bit of curiosity. "Hold on, are you….. interviewing me for a job?"_

 _Croaker snickered. "In a sense," he replied. "It was a possibility a year ago, but an open one. Now after what you have done, and what you showed to the school with that memory, well we have decided to offer you a position."_

 _Something about the way Croaker had said that last bit worried him. Somehow Harry had the feeling that he had no alternative._

" _What if I refuse?" Harry's voice was quiet._

 _Croaker opened his arms and shook his head with a guileless smile on his face; Harry disliked the smile immediately, seeing through the facade even before he saw the man's eyes. He would not take a refusal. "You won't," Croaker said simply. "For one thing my operatives in Hogwarts who have a better means of gathering and handling intelligence than Dumbledore does have noted your interest in improving your knowledge of magic, and you have an impressive spell repertoire, which you use for theft. In the muggle world, we have noticed you use a fraction of your powers to ensure you get away with it, you're smart and you're cunning enough to be a Slytherin."_

 _Was that a compliment?_

" _We can help you in ways you don't realise, among other things."_

Harry sighed as he finished with the heist of the rich family's home. The bag was full of jewellery and other Things, but the house was far larger than the flat so there was a lot more there, but he kept the heist simple. He changed his mind about the furs in the wardrobes, and he soon walked out of the house and went back to the motorcycle.

As he sped through the streets, confident and relying on the spells on the motorcycle to protect and keep him safe, Harry thought back to his early days as an Unspeakable. He had agreed because the Unspeakables had access to remarkable knowledge, and besides he would soon leave them at some point, so it wasn't a big deal.

But what they discovered…..

Harry pushed that to one side and focused on how the Unspeakables - Croaker and three others - had trained him. It had been them who had shown him the best ways to fight in a drawn-out magical battle, teaching him how to use occlumency and legilimency to not just contain his emotions behind a barrier and to read the impressions of the surface thoughts of an opponent but to use the mind arts to control and properly use his magic without exhausting himself.

The Unspeakables had also taught him the best methods to learn how to become an animagus. Harry had already learnt about the ability to turn into an animal, but from his studies in the library there was an inner animal but tapping into it required years and years of study. McGonagall and witches and wizards like her may have had the patience to do that, but he didn't. The Unspeakables had gotten to him before he had begun to go down the routes of that maze.

Looking back Harry wondered how he had been so surprised that his inner animal was a cat. As a child he had developed a very healthy tolerance bordering on near dislike for cats - being bored to death looking at one picture after another of various cats when that stupid, miserable old bat Mrs Figg had babysat him at Number 4 had not helped, but it wasn't until he had fled the boring suburbia and saw real cats like he saw real humans that he realised they weren't bad, but when he had learnt about the inner animal it had not occurred to him that his form was a cat. From a certain point of view, it made sense.

Cats were well known to be selective, aloof and independent. Harry was aloof and tended to do his own thing while trying to remain in the shadows, though in the magical world that was not easy for him since the magical world would not leave him alone.

As the motorcycle approached his townhouse and he got off, the bag not even weighing him down, Harry thought about another memory…..

" _HARRY POTTER! Harry, if you would please come up and go through the door," Dumbledore's face was grave as he read off the name on the piece of parchment._

 _At the Ravenclaw table, Harry was sitting almost paralysed, thinking that his worst fears had just been confirmed before he looked into Luna's eyes. Luna's large blue eyes were solemn; she'd obviously expected something to happen tonight when the Champions for the Tri-wizard tournament were chosen._

 _Why the hell did Dumbledore even reactivate it?_

 _Harry had known about what Dumbledore was doing behind the political scenes thanks to Croaker's resources, but after all that had been happening and the old wizard's fixation with him, it was clear international relations were not important to Dumbledore._

 _Harry looked into Luna's eyes. She knew he hadn't put his name into the goblet, but she knew like he did there was nothing he could do, and besides, perhaps this would be a good way for him to throw off more of the chains Dumbledore had tried to shackle him with. As he stood up and walked slowly towards the Head's table, he listened with growing anger to incessant buzz coming from the rest of the school. They had believed him guilty of the Chamber of Secrets because he could speak Parseltongue. Why should they have changed from that mess? The magical world didn't learn their lessons._

 _After entering the anteroom off the Great Hall where the rest of the Champions were waiting, Harry ignored the French champion, Fleur Delacour as he was more interested in trying to make plans and counter plans._

 _It was only when Dumbledore put his hands on Harry the young wizard snapped back into the present._

" _DON'T TOUCH ME!" Harry snapped. "I didn't put my name in the goblet."_

 _When Snape made his usual 'arrogant, like his father rant' Harry spoke over him with a magically binding oath._

" _I, Harry James Potter, do hereby swear on my magic I did not put my name into the Tri-Wizard tournament. I also swear on my magic I do not care one bit about international relations, nor do I give a damn about my fame, so mote it be!"_

 _Harry smirked as he finished the vow before he cast his Patronus. He was quite proud of the spell, even if he had needed to learn the bloody thing under duress with help from Professor Flitwick because Lupin wanted to keep him at arm's length, but it was the perfect spell since it was powerful and it should change people's perceptions of him being a below average student._

" _I still have my magic," he said plainly as though discussing the weather, "what does that say about your 'evidence' I put my name in the Goblet?"_

After dumping the bag almost negligently on the couch, Harry went to the kitchen to make some hot chocolate and he thought about his fourth year. The only one on his side had been Flitwick. McGonagall seemed to have forgotten about the oath he had made, and she had treated him coldly whereas Snape had been nastier. The students ganged up on him, but he was used to that kind of reaction, and the only person to be with him was Luna, who hadn't given a damn about how anyone viewed their relationship.

Admittedly he had almost laughed when Malfoy made those 'Potter Stinks' badges, and the fool actually believed they were witty and clever. Snape certainly thought so, and by the end of the third week, Harry had repeated the oath. It was clear that none of the teachers had bothered to tell the students about it, so Harry decided to take the law into his own hands.

For the tasks…. Harry had been under no illusions Croaker would have dropped him a clue, being an Unspeakable meant you would need to find your own answers and basically help yourself. Finding out about the dragons and what he and the other Champions were expected to do was not difficult, and the moment he had seen the dragons within their enormous magically reinforced cages he had wondered if someone had poisoned the water supply.

He had needed to outfly the dragon, rightly guessing that the majority of the spells in his repertoire were so matched for a full-grown mother dragon, or they would make Dumbledore too curious about him, all to grab a golden egg. Again, Croaker had not told him anything about the clue in the egg, so he had needed to work it out for himself, which had done within just a few minutes of opening it in the Ravenclaw common room; he was eternally grateful he had been sorted into Ravenclaw, while he had wondered if some of the Ravens were even intelligent with how they treated Luna and believed they could get away with it before he had stepped in, the majority of them had a few brain cells. It hadn't taken him long before he put his head under the water with the egg.

The Yule Ball had been awkward. Harry disliked the attention and he preferred his own company unless Luna was around, but he had ignored the rest of the school as he'd danced with Luna. Malfoy had taunted him about his relationship, and Snape had decided to bully him about it like it was his business, but the couple had tuned them out; Malfoy was still furious with him for losing the chance to become the Head of the Black family and Snape was angry with him in general, but since both Harry and Luna understood their reasons it was easy for them both to ignore the two petulant wizards.

Harry had had a wonderful night with Luna even though he was tired of the existence of Rita Skeeter, and the encounters with the bitch had always left a bad taste in his life. He had been content to ignore her while he tried researching ways of making the woman pay for the things she had written about Luna, though it wasn't until a year or so later he had his chance.

As the next task came along, Harry was beginning to realise that the Wizarding world was incredibly stupid and they didn't care about their own children, how else could you explain the presence of an eight-year-old girl? Getting hold of gillyweed hadn't been difficult but buying it had cost him a small fortune. Harry had chosen gillyweed because it didn't rely on a spell which would wear out. The bubble head charm was easy to use, but it was vulnerable to the prick of a needle, never mind the point of a spear held by a merman. When you cast a bubblehead charm, you were basically casting that, a bubble. It would protect you and give you a supply of air that would last for a while, but as you breathed you exhaled carbon dioxide, meaning the bubble would soon run down or pop.

Fleur and Cedric had used the charm, whereas he and Krum had used different techniques. Self-transfiguration had been a reasonable choice; simply transfigure half or a third of your body into that of a fish, or a whale, and dive down. Harry's marks in transfiguration were good, and he had studied a few books that were not part of the usual school library, but he was a long way from the level Krum was near. Harry had saved Luna and the little girl who happened to be Fleur's little sister, Gabrielle. For the first time ever he wondered why he was bothering with a school which didn't care for its students.

The resurrection of Voldemort in the third task had been a fucking nightmare since no-one had believed him when he had said the Dark Lord had returned. Harry had not said a word even as the newspapers and the media which were the mouthpiece of the Ministry of Magic said he was an attention seeking liar. Dumbledore, Luna, Xeno and the Order of the Phoenix had been the only ones to believe him; Luna and Xeno because they knew him better than most, and also because they understood Voldemort was essentially after immortality, and wizards like him didn't just die after encountering a baby.

Dumbledore had led the charge to make the Ministry see sense, only for Fudge and his cronies to take away his titles. But truthfully neither he nor Dumbledore were remotely bothered. They both knew something Fudge didn't; they knew they were telling the truth. Voldemort wouldn't stay hidden forever, but it was just so frustrating that Fudge was so stupid.

Unfortunately, he had another reason to be frustrated around that time, Dumbledore had used his injuries and disorientation caused by the fight with Voldemort to his advantage, and he had temporarily locked Harry's magic so he couldn't escape, and he had sent him to Number 4 Privet Drive…..

 _Sitting in the back of his 'uncle's' car, Harry was seething with rage. He had ignored the fat muggle's threats, the promises for a beating he would never forget for running away for the past hour, but as they approached the area of Little Whinging he decided to break his silence._

" _So, how's dear Aunt Petunia?" Harry asked as though he hadn't heard a word Vernon had said._

" _DON'T ASK QUESTIONS, BOY!" Vernon thundered._

" _Why shouldn't I? You're still labouring under that stupid belief I'm helpless, that I am that same kid you could easily beat to death, well guess what…. I'm not! I've met men, real men, not pompous, arrogant bastards like you. They don't need to beat kids to make themselves look big!"_

 _Bristling at the insult, Vernon's voice sneered as he quickly recovered his shock at the retort. "I bet they were criminals, eh Boy? Always knew you would turn out that way."_

" _Did you?" Harry's voice was bored, unaffected. "Why should I care what you and these snobs think about me?"_

 _When the car arrived at Privet Drive, Harry managed to get the trunk out of the car - he wanted to murder Dumbledore because he had placed that block on his magic - and he slipped his hand inside his inner pocket. He was just relieved Dumbledore had transfigured the clothes to make him look muggle, but on the inside he had everything. He was under no illusions the muggles inside the house would try to beat him up, so he was going to be ready. It was long past the time they woke up and realised he was not hopeless. The moment he looked up and down the street, he rolled his eyes._

 _Privet Drive had not changed. It was still the same dull street where the neighbours used their homes, gardens, and their cars to show up and impress their neighbour's. It was no wonder the Dursley's fitted into this place too well. The gardens were the same soulless places he remembered, lawns well trimmed, some of the neighbours had new cars, but there was little difference between the street he had taken one last look around on the last day he'd lived here to now._

 _Number 4, the house that Harry hated the most, had barely changed. The lawn was immaculately cut so precisely Harry was willing to bet if he got down on his hands and feet with a measuring tape he would guess the grass was cut to within a centimetre throughout. The windows were gleaming clean without a single mark._

 _Harry waved mockingly when he saw a few of the neighbours themselves peek through their curtains before they quickly left. The residents of this miserable street loved gossip, rumour, and the more malicious and shocking the better in their minds. They loved showing the other up with some bizarre change to their home, or their personal lives, but given how boring and virtually identical each of the properties was despite the few minor differences between each one was, gossip was probably the only relief they had._

 _Looking around the street, he wondered what the neighbours had been told about him over the years, but he didn't care. He had put these people out of his life years ago, so why should it matter what they'd been told? In fact, if his plans worked out the way he hoped they did with the upcoming fight, they wouldn't see him too often, making him more notorious than ever. He wondered if that moronic PC who was a friend of Vernon's was still around, but he didn't care._

" _Hurry up, Boy!' Vernon's face was puce._

Harry nodded and walked to the doorway slowly, his hand in his pocket- good, it was still there - and he followed Vernon through the door-

only _to duck when Vernon bellowed with sudden rage, but he pulled out the aluminium baseball bat he had placed inside the inner pocket, which had spells on it to return to full size when it was pulled out._

 _The baseball bat had been one of his earliest weapons, it was simpler than a knife, and it had more impact than a gun in his mind, but when he'd gone to Hogwarts he had found a way to shrink it down when he'd bought a book on runes. Once the weapon was revealed, Harry swung it around and smashed it against Vernon's leg, making the fat muggle fall to the ground screaming in pain, but he didn't stop, he swung the bat towards Vernon's exposed right arm._

 _Vernon screamed again, whimpering when his arm broke with an audible crack._

" _DAD! WHAT'S GOING ON, WHERE'S THE FREAK-?" Dudley's voice died down when he saw his cousin holding a baseball bat standing over his father._

" _Hello, Dudley," Harry smirked viciously._

 _Dudley let out a bellow, sounding very much like the father he emulated more and more every day. Harry turned the bat and smashed the top right into Dudley's gut, making the obese boy collapse to the ground, but Harry was not finished with him._

 _Stepping over the two large, whimpering blobs on the ground, Harry smashed the baseball bat right down on Dudley's hands after he'd moved them both on the floor, and the bones in the hands were broken, making Dudley scream a high pitched shriek of agony._

 _Leaving the two Dursleys on the ground, he checked the house, wondering where Petunia was hiding but he quickly lost interest and he left the house and walked around the garden. Like the front, the garden was as immaculate as he remembered it. There were a few new flowers and plants of course, but he ignored them. He had a call to make, and he headed for the garden shed and he sat down on a few bags of compost that looked like they'd been there for ages. He took out a small mirror and said clearly, "Croaker!"_

 _A moment later the aged features of the Head Unspeakable appeared. "Potter, what do you want?"_

" _Can you remove the lock Dumbledore placed on my magic?" Harry returned without preamble._

" _What happened?"_

" _I'm back with my relatives, but Dumbledore placed a lock on my magic so I couldn't escape. I need my powers unlocked," Harry said giving a basic summary of what was wrong._

 _Croaker sighed. "Put the point of your wand directly into the middle of the mirror," he instructed._

 _Harry did as he was told, and he watched in surprise as Croaker did the same and placed the point of his own wand against the glass of the mirror before he closed his eyes and concentrated. The mirror glowed a white light on Croaker's side and the glow shot through to Harry's side and through his wand and into his body._

 _Harry closed his eyes and he breathed in and out as the lock was removed. He had felt as though his lungs were being physically restrained, but now it was freed he felt better._

" _Thank you, Croaker," he said._

" _No problem. Potter," Croaker looked grave. "I've been going over the dead snake you sent me from the graveyard. I know what Voldemort did."_

 _Harry grimaced as he remembered the massive snake Voldemort had with him in the graveyard. It had almost bitten him before he had killed it, and then he had sent it off to Croaker. He had been… puzzled by the sheer size and the seeming intelligence of the thing, and since he had studied familiar bonds he had wondered how Voldemort had such a surprising amount of control over it._

" _Go on," he said._

" _Voldemort created Horcruxes."_

" _Horcruxes? What are Horcruxes?"_

" _Horcruxes are a dark form of magic. No-one knows who created them, they've cropped up everywhere around the world with an ancient tradition of magic. They're essentially used to make people immortal."_

" _How are they considered dark?"_

" _They're pieces of the soul, and those pieces are placed inside artefacts. That snake you killed is one of them," Croaker said._

 _Harry absorbed the news silently. "What about that diary I found in the second year? Could that be one of these Horcrux things?"_

" _Very likely," Croaker said grimly. "Listen, I'm going to teach you a spell to detect a Horcrux, but if you encounter one you're to destroy it immediately. The Killing Curse is perfect since the curse conventionally removes the soul from the body, though there are other means of removing them from the objects they inhabit, the Killing Curse is quick and easy…."_

 _000000000000000000000000000_

 _Leaving the shed an hour later, Harry walked back towards the house when he heard a terrible, high-pitched scream. He sighed and walked through the door._

" _Hello, Aunt Petunia," he greeted placidly as he saw her bending over her son and husband who was still whimpering with pain from the beatings he'd given them._

 _Petunia looked into his face, her expression twisted with hatred and fear. "YOU! You did this!"_

" _Of course, no more than your pigs deserved. Now get out of the way, I need to heal them and we need to have a civilised conversation-," Harry said, but Petunia shrieked at him, "WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE, YOU UNHOLY FREAK-!"_

 _But Petunia went silent when Harry, annoyed and bored with the lack of new material from the Dursley family in general, levelled his custom wand directly between Petunia's eyes._

" _Shut up. Stand up, before I do something to you that will make what I've done to your husband and son will look like a gentle tap," Harry ordered, jerking his wand and placing it under her chin, and forcing her to stand up and walk away._

 _Harry stepped back and waved his wand over Dudley and Vernon. The moment the magic healed them, Vernon got to his feet, his pasty skin tone caused by the pain he'd experienced fading as his anger mounted._

" _You….you….," Vernon's choked voice uttered._

" _You what?" Harry challenged. "You freak! You brat! I've heard them before, you need new material Vernon, now get inside the living room, I don't have all day."_

" _Oh no, Boy! You are going to give me that baseball bat and that stick, or-!"_

 _Why couldn't these idiots see that he wasn't going to do that?_

 _Harry sighed, "Oh, for fuck's sake." Flicking his wand, he petrified all of the Dursleys and placed them in a strong body binds, and then levitated the family into the living room._

 _Once the family were 'sitting' on the settee, Harry smiled at them, like a favourite relative or friend coming round to tea. Too bad it was the opposite._

" _Now, isn't this lovely? For the first time, you're in the right place and you're silent," Harry said, and then his smile faded as he got down to business._

" _Okay, let's be frank. We hate each other's guts, but let me make this clear to all you; I didn't want to come here. I have spent the last few years going out of my way to avoid you, but that old fool Dumbledore virtually kidnapped me this time and dumped me here."_

 _He didn't know why he was bothering. The Dursleys were silent, sure, but he doubted they would listen to him. They were more likely to blame him for every single thing they could think of, but that would not be anything new._

" _Lord Voldemort, the son of a bitch who murdered my parents is back, and let me tell you that the hatred you've got for me is a match for his, don't think you're alike; he hates muggles, people without magic. He doesn't care about whether Number 3 has a new car, he doesn't care one bit if you've got a new rug. In his mind, muggles are good for slavery or target practice. His followers are animals, and they have a nasty habit of raping women, so don't expect to make new friends, Aunt Petunia."_

 _Seeing the pale look on Petunia's already milk white skin told Harry he was believed._

Sipping the hot chocolate in his hand, savouring the rich cocoa taste, Harry leaned back in his seat on the sofa, considering the memories that seemed to have come back to haunt him; the payback he'd meted out on the Dursleys had been perhaps the best of all of them, but he favoured Luna based memories instead.

But another memory entered his mind.

 _Invisibility cloaks? Who in their right mind would use invisibility cloaks in a muggle neighbourhood? That scornful thought followed him even as he tried to pretend that the idiots around him who wore the offending cloaks were not there._

 _Harry was walking through Little Whinging, holding his head up high, ignoring the stares he was getting. Vernon and Petunia had been busy all this time, telling everyone in this miserable town he was going to go the same way as his parents, down the slippery slope into drugs and crime. Well, they were half right, but he didn't care about their opinions, and he spent most of his time ignoring the stares and the whispers he was receiving from everyone around him._

 _It had been a quiet week, and there was little news in the Daily Prophet he was subscribed for under a different name. Voldemort was keeping a low profile, but it hadn't been until he had seen the insults levelled in his direction by the paper when he went to the games page to do the crossword puzzles that he realised what was going on._

 _He hated the magical world. He hated how they thought they knew him, and new everything about him when in fact they did not have a clue. Harry had cancelled his subscription when he realised nothing new was forthcoming and besides if there was any news he would find out in time. He only cancelled the subscription to that rag because he was bored with them._

 _The Daily Prophet had taken over from Rita Skeeter. The woman had spent a year writing articles that made him look delusional, or evil. Personally, he didn't care what any of them thought, but locked away in the muggle world was truly trying his patience. He had hoped to escape the guard detail that had appeared from nowhere, relieved Croaker had removed the lock on his magic._

 _It had started when he had heard the familiar cracking sound of apparition, but because he hadn't seen any witch or wizard nearby, he had placed a spell on a pair of sunglasses he'd purchased, and lo and behold, he could see through invisibility cloaks. The people apparently 'watching' him didn't seem to care much about being silent, seeming content just being unnoticed and believing that was enough; Harry had listened to them mutter and whisper to each other whenever they changed 'shifts,' but what amazed him the most was they believed they were so secure with their invisibility cloaks that it never occurred to them they could be overheard._

 _Harry had seen more than a dozen of these so-called "guards," because that seemed to be what they were; they watched Number 4, they followed him around, making noise as they followed him. He recognised Alastor "Mad-eye" Moody, who didn't bother to cast spells on himself to stop the clunk-clunk, clunk of his staff from impacting on the ground, making many a muggle turn, and that was nothing compared to how many muggles probably thought they were imagining hearing a voice grumble._

 _Out of all of them, he was the most surprising. Harry had thought with all that talk about 'Constant vigilance' he would be casting silencing spells on himself to stop the muggles overhearing him, but clearly, he either forgot that, or he believed muggles to be stupid and unobservant._

 _The most memorable of the guards who didn't seem to know anything about being silent was a woman dressed in Auror robes who went around with punk-like hairdos, who seemed to stumble and trip with every movement. More than once Harry had needed to fight the urge to laugh whenever he heard the woman trip and curse._

 _But there were two other guards which surprised him._

 _Remus Lupin and Mundungus Fletcher._

 _Harry wondered what Dumbledore had done to persuade them to follow him. Lupin wouldn't have been difficult despite his cowardice, he would do anything Dumbledore told him to do even if it was pointless, but he wouldn't lift a finger to help the son of one of his friends. Harry truly wished the man had a spine instead of needing to go off about a sob story about how he was a werewolf._

 _But who in their right mind would give Mundungus Fletcher a job like this? Harry had met the thief before, though Fletcher wouldn't know that - Harry wasn't stupid enough to let the magical world know he knew more about it than everyone thought._

 _Fletcher had two personas - a serious criminal and a bungling idiot, but he used the bungling idiot side more often. Harry wondered what Dumbledore would do if he knew just how much of a presence the little thief had in the underworld, but that was not his problem._

 _It was obvious to anyone with a brain and_ _a means of looking through invisibility cloaks Fletcher was using his guard shifts to sleep and get some rest, and he didn't care about his job. That didn't surprise Harry - he knew how much Fletcher didn't like Dumbledore, despite the old wizard's trust in him and how he'd poked his nose into Fletcher's business to get him off the hook. It was an open joke in the underworld and the funniest thing was Dumbledore didn't even realise it._

 _Anyway, it hadn't taken him long to learn the Dursleys had spread another rumour about him, a story about how he was a student at a school called St. Brutus' Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys._

 _Oh, the Dursleys…. they had only spread the rumour to bring him down in the eyes of the neighbours and their friends, but all it had done was make him roll his eyes in boredom that the Dursleys were still spreading lies out of revenge since they'd been beaten by him. Literally._

 _Harry had fun with that one. He had cast compulsion charms on a few neighbours and muggles who would then come to confront him about the school. He hadn't cared what the Dursleys or their stupid friends thought about him, but it was a good idea to pay them back._

 _Harry feigned confusion each time someone asked him about the school, casting compulsion charms on them to actually bother to check with this 'school' though it sounded more like a prison for kids his age if he was actually there._

 _The Dursleys should have really thought this one through. All it would have taken would be him to say he wasn't a student there, and they would have either called him a liar, but the doubt would have been enough for some of the more intelligent people on the block to check their facts. But then the Dursleys weren't that bright, but what he could not work out was why they thought he would just meekly go along with it. Hadn't they learnt anything after he had spent a lot of time plotting to run away from their hovel?_

 _He had cast more spells that did the same, to get the neighbours talking. With a bit of luck, the idiots in Little Whinging would actually use their brains and think but he wasn't holding his breath._

 _At the Dursleys, he had forced Dudley and Vernon to move the crap out of Dudley's second bedroom (he could have just taken the one Marge used whenever she turned up on one of her self-invited visits, but it was more satisfying to see Vernon and Dudley do some work for a change) and he had planted compulsions on Vernon to place locks on the bedroom door to make them think they were in control. Once the locks were in place, he simply nicked the keys and dumped them in a bin on the other side of town. Oh, Vernon had torn the house up looking for them._

 _Harry didn't spend too much time with the Dursleys. They just weren't worth it in his mind. He spent most of his time wandering around Little Whinging, going to visit the library, but just basically doing what teenagers did. He had been upset when he'd learnt that the kindly old librarian who had been nicer to him than Mrs Figg had retired, but that was life._

 _Harry grimaced as he thought about the elderly widow. Mrs Figg had been following him around just like the people guarding him, asking him questions, but he blanked her out. He had nothing he wanted to say to the old biddy, so ignoring her was easy and besides, he had a townhouse in London to attend to._

 _He had managed to find ways of sneaking off into muggle London, dispelling the tracking spells cast on himself whenever he managed to evade the guards long enough to reach the platform at the train station. The townhouse only needed a few licks of paint here and there, but soon it would be his new home, and he was going to move in there whether Dumbledore liked it or not. He planned to actually make the move when Mundungus Fletcher was on duty, and thanks to the spells he cast over his sunglasses it was easy for him to make a chart of the shift times._

 _Unfortunately, three things happened to stop him._

 _000000000000000000000000_

" _So, you're back then?" PC Reg Baker asked, gazing at Harry through beady eyes._

 _Harry gazed placidly back at the police officer, holding back his contempt. "Only temporarily," he replied without going into too much detail while masking his irritation and disappointment._

 _Baker had known he had returned to Little Whinging and had followed him around just as much as the guards under the invisibility cloaks, but this was the first time in years they had actually spoken to one another. Personally, Harry could have done without this - the timing wasn't just wrong, he had to get into London soon or he'd get caught in the rush hour traffic - but he also hated Baker with a passion._

 _Harry had tried to run away from the Dursleys a few times, but those attempts were pitiful compared to his final attempt after he discovered his metamorphic powers._

 _Baker had been the copper who'd always caught him. The man was a bastard, a friend of Vernon Dursley who treated him just as badly as Vernon had in the past._

 _When he had been younger, the Dursleys had sold Harry as a source of cheap, manual labour. Technically under the laws of the land, such actions were against the law, and Baker had known about it._

 _The Dursleys had encouraged Harry to stay out of their home before their 'curfew' or else he'd be locked out - more than once he had tried to take advantage of that, and run away, but Baker always caught him and took him back. Many a time Harry had wondered if the bastard police officer had known about the abuse, but he had a plan to get revenge on Baker, and the social workers and the Little Whinging police to make them pay…._

" _Where've you been?"_

" _None of your business," Harry replied evenly. "Why should I tell you?"_

" _I am a police officer, and Vernon tells me you go to a school for-"_

" _Incurably criminal boys, yeah I know," Harry interrupted, not even hiding his contempt for both the stupid story and for Baker's lack of intelligence. "But listen to me, if I haven't been in this fucking backwater dump, how would he have entered me into this school? Did you and the other fools in the area think of that? When I ran away, I had the chance to make a new life. And believe me, PC Baker, I told no-one my name; I'm not that stupid. It's been temporarily interrupted, but after this summer, you will never see me again. Ever."_

 _Baker was clearly furious with him._

 _Harry smiled at him. "I'll see you around," he said before he turned to leave, but Baker clamped a fist around his wrist._

" _How did you get away from Vernon?"_

 _Harry ignored the question and he looked into the muggle's mind, not expecting his wizard guards to step in - they may be thinking they were protecting him from the Death Eaters, but they wouldn't protect him from muggles - and he saw in Baker's mind that he was actually being paid by Vernon to keep the abuse quiet._

 _So he did know._

 _Looking further into the muggle's mind, Harry could see that Vernon had only befriended the worthless piece of space to help him cover his track. In return, Vernon gave him extra cash. Harry probed deeper into the muggle's mind, and he saw that despite being happily married he saw several prostitutes but he always covered his tracks and made sure the CPS and his family didn't know anything about it._

 _Well, he could always change that._

 _He spent a few moments re-jigging Baker's mind. He didn't need to do much, Baker was already a bent copper. All he would need to do was 're-program' him to make his taking backhanders and he made the PC's alcoholism much worse. Baker frequently went to the pub, but he was always careful. All he had to do was remove the PC's inhibition and make him go into work pissed, but even better he planted a few suggestions into Baker's mind that would make him begin touching up female suspects, and he would begin sexually harassing his female colleagues, so with a bit of luck he'd get a few accusations on his record._

 _Another suggestion planted into the muggle's mind would make the PC begin hitting suspects or those he arrested, and eventually, that violent streak would make him hit his own superiors. None of the mental manipulations would come out all at once, they would begin gradually but with each day they would get worse and worse. Within a year and a half, PC Reg Baker, accessory to child abuse and all-around bent copper, would be arrested for GBH, domestic violence, drink driving and taking bribes from criminals._

 _Harry knew he was ruining a man's life, but he didn't care. He planted another suggestion for the man to let him go and walk away. Harry walked away too, he had a train to catch._

 _0000000000000000000000000000000000_

 _The second thing that slowed him down was when he walked through the front door to Number 4._

 _Aunt Petunia was waiting for him, her face furious. "What have you been telling people, Boy?" she asked shrilly._

" _What do you mean?" Harry asked indifferently, getting a good idea what the stupid woman was getting at._

" _What have you been telling the neighbours? They've been asking questions, like how you could have been placed into St. Brutus' Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys if you haven't lived with us?!"_

" _I may have….tweaked a few people's perceptions, but I didn't say anything beyond denying it," Harry replied, looking at her with amusement, almost daring her to do or say something, but he decided to head her off. "Did you honestly think, after what I did to Vernon and Dudley when I returned to this place, I would play your games? You three are stupid, but it was too easy to refute. Where did you get the idea for that school idea?_

" _You shouldn't have done that! Vernon will be angry-!" Petunia snapped before Harry's wand was jabbed between her eyes._

" _You stupid bitch," Harry sneered. "I'm not frightened of you, your husband, or your thug of a son. I didn't come up with that stupid lie about some stupid school. You and your husband shouldn't have come up with such a stupid lie in the first place. You haven't been in control of my life for years, why would you lie like that when I haven't been in this shithole for so long and you couldn't control where I went or what I did? Face facts - I know who and what I am, and there is nothing you or your son of a whore husband can do about it. Wake up, Petunia, before I curse so you badly it will shock you back to reality."_

 _Harry stepped forward, making Petunia step back. "You know something, I used to wonder why you and your husband hated me; Vernon's easy to work out, he's a pompous fool who hates anything and anyone he doesn't understand, but he's a coward who takes his anger out on kids. But you…. You're easy. You're a dried up bitch with delusions of being someone you're not. Check. You're jealous of my mother. Check. I only needed to look into your mind to see that, along with your plans."_

 _Petunia's face was pale when Harry suddenly gave her a malevolent look. "Don't think for a second your little scheme will work," he warned her, "I'll murder you after I've ruined your precious life. Now get out of my way, you filthy muggle bitch!"_

 _Petunia stepped out of her way, scared and not even bothering to hide it as he walked past her up the stairs._

 _000000000000000000000000000000000000_

 _The last thing that stopped him leaving Privet Drive was when the Dementors dropped by for a visit and a quick snog…._

* * *

Please leave me some feedback.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter.

Feedback would be appreciated.

* * *

The Thief.

After the burglaries, Harry saw his fridge was starting to get empty so he decided to head for a small supermarket to get some food. It was cold inside the shop, so Harry zipped up his jacket slightly to keep the chill out. Grabbing a small trolley because he had no idea besides the basics in his mind that he felt he needed, Harry slowly moved through the aisles and picked out some packaged meats, two granary loaves, some margarine, and he checked the prices at the fruit and vegetable section.

He picked up a bag of potatoes, some carrots, a bag of apples and some pears, a net bag of oranges, and a small box of peaches, and some grapes before moving onwards to the dairy section where he picked up some yoghurt and several bottles of milk and put them in the trolley, and he was just picking up some cheese when he saw a small boy standing close to a woman who had to be his mother.

Ordinarily, there wouldn't be anything strange about the sight of a little boy with his mother, but it was their clothes and their shifty attitudes that interested him. They had a basket, but it wasn't full. There were just a few bits and bobs inside it, but they seemed to be more interested in standing close to the yoghurt section Harry himself had checked out briefly before taking a couple and putting them into his trolley. They didn't seem interested in shopping at all.

They intrigued him.

Dressed in a short miniskirt with high heels that showed off an enormous amount of leg, her damaged hair in a ponytail, the woman tried to be too casual and unnoticed which wasn't easy given how many men gave her an appreciative look. Harry believed he was the only person in the supermarket to notice how the woman used her knee to nudge the boy. Deftly and slowly the boy moved towards the shelves of yoghurt, and he stood and looked up at them and his eyes moved from side to side like anyone else trying to make up their minds. But Harry could see one of his hands had closed around a 4-pack of yoghurts, then he turned his head from side to side, and slip them into a small bag he was carrying underneath his baggy hoodie. A towel had been placed around the bag, so it's shape remained hidden from sight. Harry's heart skipped a few beats at the sight of the boy, who looked thin and almost malnourished, making him wonder if the kid was being abused by his mother for a second before he pushed that thought to one side and focused on the boy's ancient hoodie, his battered trainers that looked like they'd been through every kind of thing you could push shoes through, and his jeans looked threadbare.

The kid reminded Harry of himself at that young age. He recalled how he had been forced to shoplift on occasion when he had been on the streets, and looking at this kid in front of him being pushed into this by his mother reminded him of some of the near misses he'd had in the past. The kid's skinny legs and arms were another dead ringer for him, but Harry could see that this kid seemed more skilled than he had been. He had needed to experiment time and again, find blind spots in the security of the supermarkets and shops he had raided in order to become proficient enough so he could do it in his sleep.

Looking at them both, Harry saw the kid was taking the items his mother was directing him to steal earnestly, trying to live up to her expectations, and as he watched Harry had a feeling if someone else caught on to what they were doing, he would make sure no blame was passed onto her, and she knew it.

The tragic thing about this whole thing was the pair of them were so conspicuous. Their ragged looking appearances, the way they were shambling along, and forgetting his shopping for the moment in favour of keeping an eye on these two though why he was bothering, Harry couldn't understand but seeing the way the boy was picking out items and putting them into the bag under his hoodie intrigued him.

But the boy was moving too slowly, and his mother smacked him as a result, ignoring the people watching them (Harry winced; these two idiots were breaking a cardinal rule of shoplifting. You didn't draw any attention to yourself, it was simply common sense), though the boy's smile was automatic, fixed, like he was trying to say his mother didn't mean it or something, but there was something there in his eyes that Harry took to be shame for letting her down.

Harry bit his lip and looked around the section he was in, and he picked up a few things that he needed (and a few which he didn't) as he found himself following them for some reason he couldn't work out.

The woman nudged the boy again, this time to pick out some soup tins with her knee again and he swiftly moved and placed them inside his concealed bag. Harry watched the spectacle, noting the boy's hands were quick and dexterous for this job, but the problem was not the kind's speed. It was the size of the bag. The woman seemed to be getting too greedy for words like she had never done a complete shop ever in her life. The bag was just too small, its needed to be in order to fit under that hoodie, but it couldn't last forever. Down the aisle, a woman who appeared to be in her late twenties, early thirties, dressed in a dark coat and was perusing sauces looked over at the boy and his mother.

Harry had had enough experiences shoplifting to know this was a shop detective, hired by the shop to catch shoplifters in the act, and she was onto these two clowns. But the child seemed a bit more observant than his mother - he noticed the woman soon enough, but he couldn't tell his mother.

The pair of them walked away and Harry decided to follow on from there. He lost track of them for a short time, but he soon caught up with them while they were in the confectionary section. The boy was some distance away and he had his back to Harry, but the young wizard could tell from his moves he was busy putting a few packets of something in the bag. The store detective was no-where nearby but she was probably still around somewhere - these two were making her job far too easy than it should be.

Harry approached the woman, noting how her haggard expression made her otherwise pretty look older and far harsher. She crouched down to inspect the prices of the biscuits, and before Harry knew it she was picking up a packet and sliding it into a bag of her own. Then she turned her attention to other packets and began to mumble as she tried to make up her mind but Harry could see her eyes were flickering from left and to right, trying to keep track of where her son was and who was nearby so she could steal the packet. Harry was close by but he was behind her, so she didn't notice him.

Looking around himself, Harry wasn't completely surprised when he spotted the woman he was sure was the store detective. The woman turned to call for her son and then found Harry squatting close to where she was but since he had carefully masked his movements to make it look to the detective he was actually another customer just wanting to collect some biscuits from the same shelf. The woman was surprised when she realised he was there, and their eyes met for a second. Harry was about to stand up and leave her, though he could feel that he had to say something to her, he restrained himself. The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop himself when he looked into her face and saw the exhaustion in her eyes.

"You've been spotted."

His simple statement made her look at him in surprise, but she masked it quickly with fear. "What?" she asked as she looked at him while her son, who'd come up to his mother with his bulging bag which was beginning to look unnatural with everything inside it, looked miserable and resigned, but not surprised.

"The woman in the dark coat. She's a store detective. She's been watching you both for a while. Do yourselves a favour - either buy what you've got, or dump the lot and get out, and don't come back here because the store detective will tell them here what you look like."

Harry added the last part when he saw the bulging bags the pair were carrying - the boy's mother's desires outweighed the capacities of both. While the majority of their 'purchases' were small, some of them were too big not to be noticed and it made it hard for the towel to conceal. In contrast, the woman had been hiding all hers in either her pockets or in a small paper bag.

Harry sighed when he realised the two were indecisive about what to do next, and he saw that the pair of them had been so deep in their own little world that they believed their actions had been unnoticed. He didn't know what they planned to do next, but he couldn't hang about so he walked over to the checkout and he watched as the pretty girl at the till processed the lot.

Harry was just leaving the supermarket when he saw the mother and her son walk up to him, and he silently groaned. What now? he thought. What does she want now?

"Who the hell are you, and why did you warn us?"

The mother's belligerent tone surprised Harry for a moment before he pushed it to one side; he had better things to do with his time than to play games with a woman like this. The mother's face was harsh as she glared at him. As she stared at him, Harry noticed a tic in her eye.

"All I did was warn you that you'd been spotted," Harry replied as he prepared to leave, thankful that he'd brought the motorcycle.

But the woman's next question took him by surprise, he hadn't expected the question. "Are you laughing at me 'cause I'm like this?" she gestured down at herself and her son's appearance. In the sunlight, their old clothes and their skinny builds made Harry think of them as scarecrows.

"No. I'm not laughing at you, I was just warning you," Harry said before he leaned closer to speak more softly to the woman so only she and her son heard him talk. "Don't use this shop again, they know what you two look like. And if you need to get stuff, buy it. Trust me, it would be better for you to do that than to steal it."

"I'm feeding my kid properly. Some of us just don't have the money, unlike others!" The mother folded her arms angrily.

Harry shook his head and decided to walk away. This woman was beginning to get right on his nerves, and worse her attitude reminded him strongly of Ron Weasley. Thinking of the greedy pig that he had been forced to spend time with at Number 12 Grimmauld Place and the Burrow made Harry feel physically sick, though he'd already known the immature tosser was a pig and a waste of physical space.

Weasley had never hidden his jealousy when he caught sight of Harry's more neater clothes, and eventually, the greedy bastard had tried to break into Harry's trunk - only for the protections to get rid of him. Harry had told his mother that they shouldn't be in the same room together. Mrs Weasley had not liked that, but she had relented.

The woman sized him up and spoke more softly. "Why did you help us?"

"I've shoplifted as well. I've nearly been caught once or twice, and I didn't want you to go through that. Don't use that store again, if you need to shoplift, stick to smaller items and don't go too mad."

With that, Harry hopped onto the motorcycle and sped away.

000000000000000000000000000000000

 _The Department of Mysteries was the only part of the Ministry of Magic Harry generally dealt with. The Unspeakables didn't rely on the public entrances, though that was true with all the other departments in the Ministry so they didn't need to become dependent. But the Unspeakables had a bit more imagination compared to the Ministry. Harry was used to those entrances where he could pop in without anyone knowing he was even in the building, so entering the Ministry through the atrium was a bit of an eye-opener while he'd been escorted by the Aurors sent to Privet Drive to retrieve him to be interrogated. He had still been in a state of shock at the time._

 _The Dursleys and some of the neighbours had been kissed by Dementors. Harry would never truly get the full story of what actually happened, but from what he got from scattered accounts by the Aurors, Petunia had felt the unnatural cold and was calling for Dudley while Vernon had been with her, trying to get an answer to what was wrong. Harry felt that added up with the sounds of Vernon's remarkably loud voice asking Petunia what was going on._

 _The DMLE found him in his 'bedroom' with a half-eaten pizza, they had spent ten minutes accusing him of dark magic before they finally accepted the fact he hadn't used magic even when he had access to his wand (he was thankful that the guard with the detail, Kingsley Shacklebolt, checked that out - he wasn't really surprised Dumbledore had a few guards from the Aurors on his payroll since their profession made them the perfect choice) so he was not responsible. They had checked it for the usual spells, but there was nothing there. Harry had told them he had seen the Dementors arrive after sensing their tell-tale presence, and had tried to escape, but Dumbledore's wards wouldn't let him leave the property._

 _But they still believed he had something to do with it. Harry had been disturbed by their lack of logic. In the end, he was dragged to the Ministry with magic restraining cuffs locked tightly on his wrists, and he was questioned. Harry was quite disappointed with the DMLE; he had heard its Head, Amelia Bones, was a fair-minded woman, but what he got instead was a woman who simply ignored the corruption in the Ministry and let Fudge get away with metaphorical murder._

 _He guessed it made sense. Bones was seen as one of the few non-corruptible employees of the Ministry of Magic, she was bound to have more than one enemy out there, so it was not illogical to guess she had needed to learn how to pick her battles. But what annoyed him the most about the woman was she hadn't tried, even covertly, to visit the site of the ritual where Voldemort had been resurrected. That spoke volumes about her character, so Harry didn't see the point in wasting his breath telling her about Voldemort's return. He had enough people saying he was a liar, he didn't need another._

 _Bones also didn't bat an eyelid when he'd been asked under truth serum about the Dursleys - she had asked him if he'd been abused by him to clarify the report the detail had brought back about the incident at Privet Drive. They had found a lot of evidence - the cupboard under the stairs hadn't been cleaned out for years, presumably because Vernon and Petunia had thought that fool Baker would find him and bring him back._

 _She hadn't been happy, but otherwise, she had been indifferent. Harry had no idea what had been going through her mind when he had admitted they had abused him, but he didn't care. He found he didn't care about any of the magical world by that point, not even Croaker who had helped him._

 _When it came to the administering of the Truth serum, one of the more aggressive Aurors, Dawlish, had told him he couldn't lie. But Harry had countered it by saying he had nothing to hide. He wasn't afraid of them bothering to ask about his activities with the DOM. Why should they? They didn't know about his ties, so why should they ask about that? Why should he worry about them asking about his wand when he was incredibly cautious about using it?_

 _But he was still worried in case someone asked a question that would send him off on a one-way ticket to Azkaban._

 _Of course, Dawlish, Fudge, and a little, squat toad-faced bitch of a witch he knew from his time in the DOM was Dolores Umbridge, the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister did not like the thought of him getting away regardless, but they couldn't stop him leaving freely._

 _All that time Harry had known he wouldn't get any help from Croaker. The Unspeakables could have used their influence over the Ministry, but it was a bad idea in the current climate. Besides Croaker's role in his training had taught him he was meant to help himself, but that was nothing new. He had learnt how to help himself all his life, why should things be different now?_

 _Harry had barely shown any emotion when Dumbledore arrived to take him away, but he'd noticed how the old wizard had not met his eyes. While curious about it he hadn't given it much thought; he didn't spend much of his time speaking to Dumbledore anyway, and besides he had more important things to worry about than the games of an old wizard he wasn't sure about._

 _But he was not impressed with the Burrow which was the temporary HQ for the Order of the Phoenix - apparently, the Order was trying to find a permanent HQ, so they had needed to resort to a more nomadic existence. Harry paused as he studied the Burrow. Looking at it he wondered how the place was even standing. It looked like the Weasleys had spent decades building their property up, trying to build a miniature skyscraper, but they had lost the resources to make it truly stable and now the place was still standing because of magic._

 _Luna had told him enough about the Burrow, but his interest in the Weasley was non-existent. He had never gotten along with the youngest members of the family, and the less said about Percy the better._

 _The thought of having to put up with the Weasley family exhausted him, and he spared an angry glare at Dumbledore. It was all his fault. He had to interfere, poke his long, broken nose into business not his own. He had been safer when the magical world had not known where he was during the Summer holidays, but now thanks to this meddling old fool he couldn't leave this dump and go back to civilisation._

 _Swallowing his annoyance, Harry followed Dumbledore into the Burrow. He was barely through the door when he was suddenly yanked off his feet. He caught an eyeful of red hair that stank of dust like it hadn't been washed for a while._

 _Harry choked as the arms squeezed the air out of his lungs. "Let go of me, please," he hissed, not in the mood to be polite._

 _The woman stepped back, her face red with annoyance. "Now, that is no way to speak to me, Harry dear," she said._

 _Harry raised an eyebrow, what made her think he wanted to be called 'dear' by a virtual stranger?_

" _Mrs Weasley, I don't like being touched or hugged. The only person I like hugging me isn't here. Please don't touch me," he said quietly before he turned to Dumbledore. "Is there a reason I am here, Headmaster?"_

" _You need to be protected," Dumbledore said._

" _I was protected," Harry stated before he turned around and walked slowly away from Dumbledore, ignoring Molly Weasley's cry of indignation for how he was speaking to Dumbledore. "You took away my anonymity. Did it never occur to you if you never interfered, placing a lock on my magic, and just letting me sink into the muggle world where no-one knew where I was, that I might be better protected?"_

" _Your measures made you more vulnerable," Dumbledore argued, "Lord Voldemort is one of the most dangerous, relentless wizards ever produced by Magical society. He would have hunted you down. At the Dursleys, you were protected-."_

" _You don't know that. I may have made use of methods to hide that you'd never have thought of yourself. Your wards worked, by the way, so at least they weren't a total loss," Harry replied, turning to Dumbledore, "I'm not denying that, but what made you send guards to look after me, protected only by Invisibility Cloaks? What's wrong; the Great Albus Dumbledore unable to comprehend how muggles can hear things even if they can't see the source, or they might accidentally trip on the hem and your guard can be revealed?"_

 _Dumbledore said nothing._

 _Harry sighed. "Oh, why am I bothering? You've never learned from your mistakes in the past, why start now?"_

 _This was too much for Molly Weasley. "Now see here, you are being ungrateful towards Professor Dumbledore-!"_

 _Harry interrupted her loudly. "Mrs Weasley, I am grateful; if it was not for Dumbledore's wards, my soul would no longer be in my body, but the fact remains he didn't even ask me if I could go to the Dursleys of my own free will. If he had bothered to do something so simple, then maybe things might have been different."_

' _I have asked you to return to the Dursleys many times in the past. You have always refused," Dumbledore pointed out, still not looking Harry in the eyes._

" _Yeah, because I didn't want those stupid muggles from treating me like slave labour and a punching bag because they couldn't accept the fact their plans for me were out of the window," Harry snapped back. "I may have gone to Privet Drive to spend some time there, but I wouldn't want to spend no more than a few days there. Do you know what the Dursleys wanted to do to me? They wanted to 'beat the freakishness out of me,' my magic. They wanted to send me to a dismal school, and they wanted to throw me onto the streets where I would have NOTHING. It was Petunia's revenge on her sister, whose only crime was having a gift she didn't and could never have, the bitter bitch. You don't believe me - they wanted to make sure I knew nothing of my heritage, and you would have helped them. I, Harry James Potter, do hereby swear on my magic and on my life, I have just said the truth of what the Dursleys wanted to do to me, So Mote it be!"_

 _When Harry lit up the tip of his wand, Dumbledore blanched. "Harry, what have you done?"_

 _Molly Weasley looked horrified as she looked between Dumbledore and Harry._

" _Stated the truth."_

000000000000000000000000000000000000000

The next morning, Harry boarded a Tube train and mentally prepared himself for the journey to college to continue his courses; he didn't really care about the work he was doing even if he was fascinated by what was being taught, and how he felt his horizons become broader, but after he found the article in the newspaper he had bought before catching the train his attention was fixated on something more than a photography course.

He had been obsessed with keeping an eye on the news ever since his little nostalgia tour last night, he had been watching the news more than usual in case there were tell-tale signs of magical activity leaking in the non-magical world. That was how it always started, with Dark Lords and other dark wizards - they would go out into the muggle world, and they would attack or cause some disturbance the police could not work out and would be scratching their heads for until doomsday. But there was nothing.

Finally, at around 11:30 he had gone to bed in the hope that when he woke he wouldn't have any more thoughts about Luna and what happened to her and Xeno, and how Snape and Malfoy had murdered them while trying to "get back at him" over slights he genuinely didn't give a damn about.

Well, when he had woken up he hadn't had much thought about the magical world, and he'd just prepared for another round at college. Harry bought a newspaper and went down to the Tube lines below, and he checked the display board. He had three minutes before the next train arrived at the station, so he had time to skim some of the newspaper articles.

But it was the headline and the accompanying picture on the front page of the newspaper that caught his attention. The newspaper showed an older couple who were standing side by side with an elaborate oil painting in between, both showing off their wealth clearly through the photograph printed in the newspaper. A few jewels seemed to gleam through the paper.

Harry was so enraptured by the wealth in the photograph and the clear smugness of the couple that he didn't notice the headline all that much, and he jumped out of his skin when the train thundered into the station before coming to a halt. Annoyed with himself Harry boarded the train and sat down, fortunately the train was virtually empty aside from a few other passengers so he was able to sit down quietly without anyone bothering him.

The newspaper headline read "RICH COUPLE WITH ART COLLECTION ARRIVES IN LONDON," though why they would be stupid enough to announce it to the press he didn't know, as he read the article he realised that the couple had some influence with the newspaper. Harry didn't care about that and he spent most of the journey before the interchange point where he would have to get off the train and board another one just reading the article.

Apparently, the man was a rich art dealer who had made a small fortune and collected a fair amount of art pieces, some of which were incredibly hard to find and there were a few pieces he'd acquired which had somehow gone missing because of the Nazi's in World war two.

Harry didn't pay that any mind, but what he did pay attention to was the enormous figure the collection was worth.

There was quite a lot of information in the paper, but it didn't list anything about the address of the couple, but then again no-one in their right mind would list that - just looking at the photograph would attract any thief from the lowly ones to the professional burglars.

Harry would need to find the paper office and he would track down their address. He checked his watch and saw that when he got to the college, he would have at least half an hour to find the address of the newspaper offices and he would have a short amount of time to track down the editor.

0000000000000000000000

Getting into the editors office was straightforward enough after he'd gone to the college library and he had simply looked it up on the internet, and keeping an eye on the time Harry had simply apparated to the nearest place he knew in the general vicinity of the office (he cursed the fact apparition only worked properly if you knew where you were going), and headed there on foot. As he approached the office, he cast a notice-me-not charm over himself and searched for the editor's office. It didn't take much effort - a mere look into the mind of one of the reporters, and he had a mental map of where to go. He had to work fast, he had to get back to college in a few minutes.

The editor was talking to someone on the phone. Harry flicked his wand a few times to ward off the office from the reporters and the secretaries outside. The office was one of those glass-walled offices that kept the editor separated from the rest of the offices on the floor, and there was just a desk within and out trays, a pair of overstuffed visitors trays, and a filing cabinet with a few pictures and framed newspaper pages the editor was fond of, but that was it.

Harry flicked his wand silently towards the phone, and the editor didn't need long to realise he'd been cut off. "Hello? Hello?"

Cancelling the notice-me-not charm over himself, Harry allowed himself to become visible. "The connection's been cut off, but don't worry about it."

The editor leapt to his feet. "Who are you?" he demanded, startled by the sudden presence of the young wizard in the office.

"No-one you know," Harry said curtly, hiding a small smirk; he loved magic and what it could do. While what he'd done would barely fool another wizard or a magical office which was warded against spells like the ones he'd used. "I just want what you know."

The editor backed up and his frightened eyes flicked over to the glass walls of his office, obviously worried about why no-one in the office was noticing what was happening. "I don't know what you mean," he stalled before he suddenly yelled. "HELP! HELP! Someone's in my office. Security!"

Harry smiled when nothing happened. Silently he flicked his wand at the editor, and he conjured some ropes to tie him firmly to the chair before walking over and pointing his wand directly at the editor's eyes. "Legilimens," he whispered, bracing himself for the legilimency intrusion.

Harry was incredibly gentle as he entered the mind of the editor. While all human beings had some defences over their minds, wizards and witches alone had the knowledge at present to protect their minds effectively, muggles had comparatively feeble defences so he needed to be gentle. Harry had no desire for the man to be permanently damaged by his probing. He wanted what he planned to do with the couple in the newspaper article to be carefully planned, and ripping the mind of the newspaper editor would throw up too many red flags.

Once he had the address, Harry spent the next minute checking the muggle's mind and saw he hadn't done any lasting damage. He had been trained to look for any mental damage caused by mental probing, and he had a good grounding in how to repair the damage, thank god.

Harry withdrew his probe and he levelled his wand again, "Obliviate."

After leaving the editor and removing the wards around the office, Harry returned to the college quickly. He arrived just in time - the class was just starting, so he took his seat quietly with an apology.

000000000000000000000000000000000

Once college was over, Harry made his way to the address. Typically the family had purchased a property in one of the trendier parts of the city and as he stood outside the property, protected by a notice-me-not charm, Harry reviewed everything he had learnt from the editor. Okay, he hadn't known a great deal about the property's layout, but that was simple enough to get hold of.

Harry went down the end of the street and found the a-typical alleyway rich people used to store their trash, so finding the back gate was easy. He could have used his animagus form to spy, but after that newspaper article, he had no idea how long he had before someone found out about this particular mark. It had been written in black and white this couple were rich, and their fortune was represented by jewellery and paintings.

Okay, granted, art theft was not Harry's strong point since he had little idea what the difference between a real Van Gogh and a fake Van Gogh was, but he didn't care; even a fake would net him a small fortune unless one of the party involved like the middleman was an expert and blew the whistle on the whole thing. But he doubted this collection was a fake, though if it were then he would be in trouble.

Opening the back gate was child's play - it was just a deadbolt and that was easy to get around with a wand though he could have performed the same job by using his animagus form and simply bypassing the whole thing, it didn't matter. The house was just as impressive from the back, with an ornate patio with a flower display that looked like it had been arranged by machines rather than people.

Harry flicked his wand at the house to get an idea of where the occupants were, and he was satisfied when they were nowhere near the back door. a quick unlocking charm and he was through the door.

The kitchen was full of boxes that had been neatly piled to one side, but it looked like the kitchen was virtually ready for use already. Harry walked through the house, and soon he came across what looked like a private gallery in the process of being set up. Harry walked into the room but not before casting a quick spell to alert him in case someone came close; just because he had a notice-me-not charm thrown upon him, he didn't want to take any stupid risks.

The room was fairly large and very bare. All of the paintings were leaning against the walls while there were boxes that were presumably full off sculptures neatly arranged in the centre of the room, contradicting the almost slovenly, uncaring manner other boxes had been left in the rooms he had seen. Harry looked around the room thoughtfully before he decided to leave and check out the rest of the property and he soon came across the art dealer himself. He was alone in the bedroom, looking out of the window standing casually with his hands in his pockets. Without hesitation, Harry flicked his wand and stunned the art dealer and he quickly levitated him over to the bed and spent the next five minutes looking into his mind.

The most important thing Harry wanted to learn was whether or not the collection itself was genuine or just an elaborate fake. He wasn't particularly surprised when he learnt that some of the paintings were clever fakes produced by geniuses who had learned how to make dozens of reproductions while making it truly hard for an expert to tell the difference, but the majority of the paintings and sculptures were actually genuine. From the mind of the unconscious art dealer, Harry learnt about some of his shadier dealings and mentally filed those aside since he didn't really care what this guy did, but he also learnt that the art dealer had quickly learnt buying and selling paintings was not going to make him richer like he had once suspected, so he had turned to smuggling.

Harry was interested in this little line of extra income and so he spent the next ten minutes looking to see what kind of things he sold. Interesting. He smuggled back home small pieces of jewellery, some diamonds here and there, and he sold them at premium rates. He had a small number of diamonds coming in a few days, so that meant he would need to stop any other thief who was better informed about getting involved.

Harry pulled out of the muggle's mind, his brain awash with the new information of how he could become richer, but he looked down thoughtfully at the rich art dealer on the bed before he lifted his wand again and got to work.


	5. Chapter 5

As always I don't own Harry Potter, just this story.

Please leave feedback.

* * *

The Thief.

Something was wrong; he sensed that as soon as he crossed the ward barriers around his townhouse. The moment his mind registered the disturbance he took out his wand, and immediately began scanning the townhouse and the wards. When he was finished he was both angry and surprised, someone had been here, someone from the magical world.

At first he thought it might have been Croaker, but the Head of the DOM didn't need to resort to such tactics to find him. Harry had done his level best to put some distance between himself and Croaker and his Department; it had been part of their little arrangement, Croaker helped him fight Voldemort and give him some training that few wizards and witches bothered to learn even those who had the opportunity, like how to become an animagus even if that was common thing to study but since it involved a lot of work in the field of transfiguration not many bothered, and then he did freelance work.

Most of Harry's freelance work. for the DOM wasn't much; occasionally he'd be asked to steal something, some new spell or artefact that had been stolen already, or he would simply be sent out to spy on anyone the DOM considered to be dangerous, or they would send him out on a mission to investigate something that others couldn't work out.

The Department of Mysteries had been set up by Merlin to seek out and discover new magics and integrate them into magical society. They were constantly looking for answers to their questions while seeking out new questions. Harry didn't have any problem working for them; the fact everyone in the magical world thought he was dead gave him the perfect cover, who would be looking for a dead guy? But Croaker respected his privacy, though Harry had taken some extreme steps to make sure the Head Unspeakable did not disturb his privacy.

Harry had not heard anything from Croaker in a long time, something that didn't really concern him that much since he wasn't interested in playing the games of witches and wizards older than he was. But this didn't seem like Croaker's work, and after he performed a few extra scans when he began to wonder if Croaker was involved he realised his guess was wrong, but then he'd already worked it out.

The Head Unspeakable had more subtle methods of contacting him., he wouldn't leave clues; the Unspeakables did not and would never leave traces of their presence. It was part of their basic training, to go and be unnoticed.

No, this was someone else.

For a moment, he wondered if Dumbledore was the one to try to get in, and he scanned the property again to see if whoever it was had left some kind of spell behind as a trap, but there wasn't one. That ruled Dumbledore out, the man had never resisted casting spells on other's property but he was more subtle that the person who'd tried to get inside his home.

No, this was more likely someone else which frustrated him no end because it could have been anyone though he had no idea how this could have happened since he took so many precautions when he left his home.

The good news was the number of wards he had placed over his townhouse that stopped anyone other than himself unless they were invited into his home stopped whomever had tried to get in.

Harry walked into his home, dropping his things off and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. Once he had made it he went to the living room and turned his television on to think about his plans, but he was still concerned by the fact someone magical had disturbed his home. After a bit of thought he decided not to worry too much about it until he discovered who it was. Right now he had to focus on his plan to steal the art collection, and he had to spend time thinking about it because in a few hours he would be heading that way. It was his way, but like an artist he liked thinking about his long term plans.

Harry sat there, drinking his coffee and waited for the right time to move. He had placed a suggestion into the mind of the art dealer to take his wife out for a nice meal; they could easily afford it and still have enough cash to buy a luxury flat. But even if the suggestion didn't work since he hadn't made it as strong like the spells he had placed on PC Baker when he had encountered the corrupt police officer (Harry privately wondered whether the spells he had placed on Baker had thoroughly ruined the fuckers' life, but he would follow that up soon), it made no difference.

Harry could effortlessly stage a violent robbery on his own if they happened to be in the house when he showed up; a few spells on the property that would make it appear like the door had been smashed open, a broken window, or something along those lines, a few implanted memories into the minds of the muggles that would make the art dealer and his wife tell the Old Bill that instead of just one person there were at least 4 or 5, dressed in black, armed with crowbars and god knew what else with balaclavas covering their faces.

He had had used that trick before, he tended to use it to cover his tracks or when he simply wanted to give the police a burglary gang that was non-existent. It had never failed to make him laugh when he pulled it off, but he didn't play the trick too often in case it became too boring for him.

For two hours Harry waited. Occasionally he left for the kitchen to get some fresh coffee, and he munched on a couple of apples and pears - he planned to have a full dinner when he returned to the townhouse, but for now he was eating as light as he could while keeping up his strength.

While he waited he watched television and watched a video he'd bought before switching to the news, though there was nothing beyond the typical chaos in the muggle world.

Finally he glanced at this watch, and when he saw that it was nearly time he took a moment to strengthen his occlumency barriers. Once he was finished he turned off the television and went into the hall, and put on his sneakers and grabbed his overcoat. But before he walked out of the house, he remembered his concerns about the person out there who had tried to get in..…

Part of him was tempted to add a few spells to entrap the witch or wizard, but another part wanted to make the other think that he was lazy and wasn't bothered either way because he felt he was protected…. Harry made his decision and he flicked his wand on something that wasn't connected to the wards, in this case it was a small garden ornament. It was unlikely whoever knew he was still alive and was not dead would concentrate on the wards and not bother to locate spells like that. But before he left, he activated the inner wards which were separated from the outer wards and would probably not be detected.

Once he crossed the ward barrier he cast a notice-me-not spell over himself and he apparated to the art dealer's home.

000000000000000000

He was in luck, the suggestions he had placed into the art dealer's mind had taken hold and he had taken his wife out to dinner, which left the house free for him to plunder. Still, he made it look like an ordinary burglar had got into the place by smashing the front door after applying a simple silencing spell to deaden the sound. The first place Harry went to was the bedroom where the woman's jewellery was waiting. he had already found out the information after rummaging around in the muggle's mind.

Once he was finished he left the bedroom and went to the room the art dealer had begun to use for storage of his merchandise, and when he arrived he shrank some of the items so then he could put them into his pocket. It took him about five minutes, and when he was finished he left the house through the backdoor so he could leave behind some breadcrumbs for the police to pick up on, like he had done with the door.

After closing the back gate, Harry apparated back to the street his townhouse was on, and he paused outside thoughtfully. He had placed a lot of spells on the place over the years to protect it even if the magical world thought he was dead, but this time he raised his wand and scanned the whole ward web to see if anyone had tried to break in during the last ten minutes while he wasn't here to keep watch.

No disturbances. That was good, but he was still concerned that someone out there, maybe even a whole group, knew he was still alive. Harry had left quite a few people out there who would like nothing better than to capture and to kill him. Maybe even lock him up in Azkaban to make him 'repent' as Dumbledore would want.

Letting out a sigh, Harry lowered his wand and went into the townhouse, the wards instantly recognising him and his magic as their creator and so letting him in, but before he closed the door he looked out onto the street. There was no-one around, but he once more flicked his wand around and used some of his most subtle detection spells to pick out anyone who was there in hiding. There was no-one spying on him or his property, which meant that whoever had tried to get in would probably come back some other day, either because they were incredibly lazy and stupid, or they had become spooked by the type of spells he had cast on the townhouse and had decided to lie low for a few days until they felt it was safe to come back.

Harry sighed and walked into the house, annoyed and irritated that someone was interfering in his affairs once more, poking their noses in without considering the consequences of what he would do to them once he got his hands on them. Angrily taking off his coat and kicking off his shoes with more force than was necessary, Harry threw the Things he had taken from the art dealer's house onto a sofa and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner. He made sure to keep his wand on his person, he had no idea if whomever was responsible for denting his wards earlier was going to return tonight or not, but he had no intention of taking stupid risks.

Pizza was on the menu tonight. He unrolled a base and grabbed the ingredients before he switched on the oven to heat it up in preparation. He began smearing bolognese sauce over the base before he sprinkled on the first layer of mozzarella cheese before he chopped an onion and some pepper and placed them on the base, then he placed the pepperoni on next, always sprinkling some cheese on top to help hold it all together.

When he was finished he put the pan into the oven and set the timer to 25 minutes before he grabbed a glass and poured some water into it and then went into the living room to try to grab some relaxation. But he was still edgy that someone was out there, someone who might know he was alive.

What infuriated him was it brought back some unpleasant memories….

 _Harry just stared at the redheaded idiot in front of him. Weasley had never learnt how to control his explosive temper in all the time Harry had known the guy, but right now Harry couldn't bring it in him to care really about what the fool's problem was, not when he had just found the guy frozen over his trunk._

 _Harry had been downstairs at the time, carrying out some of the boring chores Mrs Weasley had given him when everyone had heard the alarms go off, and ignoring the stupid woman, Harry immediately rushed up the stairs and found Weasley bending over the trunk that he had managed to open. The magic of the immobilising trap was visible, crackling all around Weasley and every time he tried to move, moans of pain as the crackles increased in volume. Harry stood there, frozen himself but he hadn't been completely surprised; he had been at the Weasley's cramped, boring, decrepit hovel for the past few days and he had noticed the jealous and envious glares Weasley had sneaked over at him and his trunk. If he thought he was being subtle, well he needed to find a new dictionary._

 _Harry was followed up the stairs by Mrs Weasley, wand in hand, already ignoring her and several other members of Dumbledore's little vigilante group who had been alerted as well by the sounds of the wards, but he ignored them as well. The Order of the Phoenix didn't interest him. As far as he was concerned they were a group of old fools and people who were out of their depth._

 _The moment he saw Weasley, he froze himself in surprise - he had expected problems with the redhead for a while now, but he had not expected Weasley to actually try to break into his trunk, but then since he didn't share a house at Hogwarts with Weasley he had never foreseen any problems. "What do you think you're doing, you stupid fuck?" Harry hissed at him in a cold voice._

 _Harry flicked his wand to undo the spell, ignoring Granger's spiel about not being allowed to do magic out of school and released the redhead. "Why did you try to go through my trunk?"_

 _Weasley went red in the face. "I didn't! I just saw it open, and I decided to close it!" he yelled, not happy with the accusation._

 _Harry just closed his eyes for a second while he reinforced his occlumency barriers while he looked into Weasley's mind. The redhead was lying. "I haven't opened my trunk all day, and I shut it after the last time I opened it," Harry said evenly, "now tell me the truth."_

 _He surreptitiously cast a compulsion charm on the other boy to make him talk. He didn't want to be here all night arguing with the stupid redhead and his family, who would probably support their irritating family member._

" _Tell me the truth, Weasley," Harry pressed again to trigger the compulsion; he had scanned Weasley's mind many times in the past when the redhead had tried to rope him into joining his other equally stupid friends to play a game of chess, something which didn't appeal to him, and he knew the redhead was being put up to it by his mother in the hopes they could marry into the Potter family._

 _It was never going to happen. Already Harry had needed to magically remove the potency of the potions the bitch had given him. But maybe now he could score a victory against the entire Weasley family._

" _Alright! Yeah, I tried to break into your trunk!" Weasley shouted aggressively._

 _Harry was just thinking he had made the compulsion a little too strong since it was bringing out Weasley's aggressive tendencies a little too much. It worked when Mrs Weasley yelled in outrage, but it was Hermione Granger who laid into him. "What?! But, Ron, why would you-?"_

" _Ah, shut up, you loud mouthed, jumped up little Mudblood!" Weasley sneered as he yelled at her, ignoring his family's yells of anger at what he had just called Granger. "You don't know what it's like to be poor, to be looked down upon 'cause you're wearing hand-me-down clothes. You don't know nothing 'bout being poor! But he walks around our home, dressed in new clothes," Weasley gestured to Harry, who just stood there, "and has nice things. It like he's blind to what it's like being poor!"_

 _Harry couldn't resist interrupting. "Neither do you, Weasley," he said so quietly that everyone heard him. He flicked his wand silently to shut the aggressive boy up and he instantly petrified the redhead but quickly stopped him keeling over and crashing to the ground. "Neither do you," he repeated._

 _Everyone watching was silent as Harry silently and gracefully walked around Weasley, circling him either like a hungry jungle cat, or a shark menacing some prey. He flicked his wand to keep everyone from coming into the room - he had no idea what he planned to do with Weasley yet, but until he made up his mind he didn't want them getting involved._

" _You're not poor, Weasley; you have a home, you have a regular intake of food, water, or pumpkin juice or whatever you bloody well like to drink. You have a father who works in the Ministry, you've also got three elder brothers - one of them may be acting like a fucking arse much like you are, but he could still send you some cash. Same with your older brothers. I don't know if they do it or not, but you know something it isn't my problem. I'm not a member of your family, and I don't really care. In my mind, you can take care of yourselves. Everyone can. It's not the job of one person to look after everyone. That's not how people should live."_

 _Harry paused for breath. "My philosophy is simple; you grow stronger through conflict. Survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. Call it whatever you like, but I grew up on the streets. I had nothing, Weasley. I didn't have a home, the muggles I was placed with were sub-human animals who turned me into a slave. Does that sound like your life? They planned to push me into a dismal school so then they could eventually kick me out onto the streets where I would have nothing. Does that sound like you? My aunt was a jealous bitch, just like you Weasley. She was jealous of my mother, who was prettier than she was, and because Lily was a witch."_

 _Harry chuckled. "My aunt's plan for me was simple. Unlike her thug of a husband, she had a plan of her own and it didn't really involve me leaving the house in a bodybag. No. Her plan was to throw me out onto the streets, just like I said before. She thought her husband beating me up would somehow 'remove' my powers, and then I wouldn't know my heritage. She and her bastard husband told me lies about my parents. Do you parents do something similar to you, Weasley? No, they don't. Anyway, back to my aunt and uncle. They planned for me to live on the streets where I would become a drug addict."_

 _Harry's voice darkened. "I escaped their beatings, Weasley. My magic saved me each time those filthy muggles," he paused as he ignored Granger's harsh rebuke and carried on, "those filthy muggles touched me. Eventually, I escaped on the streets when I managed to master some of my abilities. I stole some cash, some supplies, and I survived on the streets. I told you of my belief that strength comes through conflict only - I would never have managed to plan my escape unless I was smart and cunning enough to actually come up with a way of escaping. I studied the Dursleys, looked out for opportunities, and I took advantage of such an opportunity. I was beaten up five times alone during my first month in London. I saw kids who were older or younger than me, Weasley. They were homeless, constantly fighting a battle for shelter, for food and water, while trying to keep warm and stopping themselves from becoming ill. Sometimes they didn't succeed, and they died, alone and unwanted. Do you think that sounds like you? Have you ever had to do that, or have you managed to survive in this house in a cosy bed?"_

" _They beat me up for a variety of reasons. One, I was on their turf. Two, I stole their food occasionally, and since they didn't have enough to go around in the first place they had incentive, and three because I was there. I was beaten up five times, each time was worst than the last. My magic managed to stop the worst of the damage, but they came again and again until I decided to fight back. I grabbed a piece of metal pipe, and I smashed it into them. Over the years, I became better at fighting - all it took was being beaten down a few times here and there, but I became stronger. I learnt from my mistakes, learned martial arts and studied pressure points until I became dangerous. Have you ever needed to learn how to fight, not the typical rough and tumble, but a real fight involving blood, sweat, and broken bones? No, Weasley, you haven't - you don't need to, because you don't need to fight because you actually have something I never did as a kid; a home with a loving family, but you're either too dense or incredibly ungrateful and insecure to see it. Again, it's not my problem."_

 _Harry shook his head and let out a sigh. He hadn't expected, nor had he planned on revealing his philosophy nor his past to the Weasleys, never mind Granger and the Order of the fucking Phoenix, but he had decided to give everyone some perspective of what life was like beyond their cosy picture. He bit his lip as he mulled over what to stay next before he decided to just go for it._

" _Lord Voldemort….. he's a lot like myself," Harry said, ignoring the way everyone flinched and/or looked aghast at the thought of their 'hero/saviour/dogsbody' being anything like the current Dark Lord, "like me, he has magical ancestry dating back centuries. Like me, he grew up in a shithole. But unlike him, I just want to be left alone and I really do not care who runs the Magical World. Voldemort is nothing more than a deranged, angry child, lashing out at everyone and anyone because he's truthfully a pathetic weakling crying out because mummy died and left him alone, and daddy abandoned him. Grow up and get a life, you snake-faced son of a whore, that's what I say._

" _Like me, Voldemort had nothing much. But you know what, Weasley?" he said as he knelt down to where Weasley was still paralysed, looking at him with horror, anger, hatred and fear. "I'm better than that son of a whore, and I'm better than you; I don't go running around telling everyone I'm poor. You think you've had a hard life. Guess what - so have other people, they've had to live in the cold. You, you've probably had more hot meals than they've ever had in their lives, you miserable, worthless cunt."_

 _Harry stood up, looking down at Weasley with contempt. "You haven't lived a tough life, what are you talking about you pathetic loser? I didn't ask to come here, Weasley. I'm already giving your father rent to be here - he didn't like it, but I insisted because there are too many people in this house, using it as a rent-free hotel. I'm surprised its even allowed, 'cos I can tell you one thing, if some old moron asked me if they could use my home for meetings, I'd tell them to sling their bloody hooks when they were done. I'm giving your dad extra cash for food and whatever essentials."_

 _Harry ignored the look Mrs Weasley sent to her husband, but he was focused on the twat at his feet. Suddenly he shook his head. "I've got to get away from you. I don't care what your mother says or thinks, I'm taking my trunk out of here and I'm going to find somewhere else to sleep. I've had enough of looking at your piggish face. But let me tell you that if you try to touch my trunk again, I'll kill you."_

The sound of the oven alarm broke through Harry's reverie, so he got up and headed back into the kitchen and took a look at his pizza. The cheese had melted, becoming a lightish brown in colour while the base it sat on had turned darker and more crispy. The pepperoni had also darkened and merged with the melted cheese while the onion and pepper had darkened and sat in-between the various ingredients.

Harry nodded in satisfaction and took the pizza out, wincing a little as the hot gases blew into his face and he took the hot pan over to the counter where he cut it up into pieces and placed them on a plate before taking it back into the living room. As he ate, he thought back to how everyone had reacted to what he had done and said to Weasley. Many of the Order of the Phoenix were spooked Harry thought he was similar to Voldemort, and he could see the wheels in the heads of quite a few of them turning as they wondered if he was going to become just like Voldemort, in fact, he had seen Moody examine him through his narrow eye, while his false eye rotated and span around a few times like he expected Voldemort to appear out of thin air.

He hadn't intended to frighten or spook them, he had merely been stating a point that while Weasley was poor, there were others who had far better reasons for being bitter. In the end, he was indifferent to their views, but things didn't improve. Harry managed to get one of the older brother's rooms, though not without protest from Mrs Weasley, but he had ignored her and placed spells on his things so they couldn't be moved by someone else.

He had meant what he had said to the woman and her son about living in a different room, but he had not said anything about physically hurting Weasley though some of the smarter idiots in the Burrow would have probably picked up on the implication. Still, it made no difference now.

And then Dumbledore had got into Number 12 Grimmauld Place. The old wizard had believed that Harry's new property was Sirius' old house, so he had gone to Harry and asked him without once looking him in the eye if they could use the old Black townhouse. Harry had agreed - he didn't plan on using Number 12 in the future, so it was worthless to him. Dumbledore could have it as far as Harry was concerned.

Harry had visited the place once after Sirius had been kissed by the Dementors. Number 12 was a dump, the enchantments and the spells on the place had altered in some manner that Harry was not able to work out. He had scanned the property and sent the readings to Croaker to find out what was going on.

The Unspeakable was amazed by what was going on with the wards of the Black townhouse, but he hadn't a clue to what was causing the strange magical mutations, so he had needed time to really examine it. In the meantime, Harry had been forced into cleaning the place. The Weasley's and their ignorance appalled Harry; the house was full of dark magic, the enchantments the Blacks had cast and spun into the property over the years had somehow mutated until they were probably so dangerous any move could be the equivalent of making a noise that would start an avalanche.

They were venturing everywhere, destroying everything that they saw as 'dark' as if the property was their own. This stopped when Harry raised such a stink over it that he threatened Dumbledore by telling him he would need to look elsewhere. The actions of the Weasley family at Number 12 Grimmauld Place was proof that his desire to keep the magical world away from the townhouse he had inherited from his parents was a good move.

The Weasley's had no respect for other people's property. Molly Weasley was a force of nature blundering through life, screaming at her children to do this and that and they followed her orders because if they didn't they would suffer a three-day headache. It had taken a bit of work but Harry had reached a compromise - get a curse breaker into the house to have a good look at the enchantments on the house, and try to take them down. After that, they use magic to systematically strip the muck from the house.

Molly Weasley had been insistent they not use magic, but Harry ignored her. The woman was not his mother, and the fact that a witch refused to perform magic in favour of using muggle methods was confusing him. She had a desire to ensure her children only performed magic at school, not at home but it meant nothing to him.

Granger followed Molly's opinions. She believed in those stupid rules where children and teenagers could not perform magic except at Hogwarts. Harry had known for a while that as long as you had wards around your property, there would be too much magic in the environment for the Ministry to track. Grimmauld Place and the Burrow were full of magic, so no-one could pick it up at the Ministry. Either way, Harry and the twins and Ginny Weasley had decided to ignore the two idiots.

Kreacher, the old Black house elf, had been a problem. Harry had met dozens of House-elves over the years, but he had never met one like Kreacher, who had been unpleasant. Whatever was going on with the Black townhouse was definitely contagious, and every minute Harry spent in it, he wondered if he would become polluted by the spells.

Things became clearer when Harry had moved into a bedroom belonging to "Master Regulus" and Kreacher had gone berserk. Harry, who knew enough about the Black family after his encounter with Sirius, knew Regulus had been a Death Eater, so he had lashed out at the little elf about how Regulus was dead and it was his own fault for being a Death Eater.

Kreacher had burst into tears and soon Harry found out about the locket Horcrux. He had asked Kreacher about what happened, and he received the story of how Regulus discovered what Voldemort had done to his soul and was disgusted by it, and even more disgusted when he learnt that Lord Voldemort was just a thug and his followers were just as bad.

Regulus had wanted to have a hand in changing the magical world, but he didn't see how destroying thousands of people was going to do it, how murdering pureblood families just because they had a different opinion was going to work in the long term. Regulus had been unsure of what to do before he discovered the Horcruxes, and he had tried to destroy them but he was torn to pieces for his efforts.

Harry was shown the locket Horcrux just in time - Mundungus Fletcher was trying to steal the Black ornaments, and Kreacher had been trying to stop him from taking too much, but what he had been really interested in was the locket. Kreacher had shown him the locket and when Harry had seen it, he figured out the cause of the mutation behind the Black townhouse.

The locket was hit by a killing curse after he had taken it to the DOM thanks to the old house-elf and that was that.

Another memory, a happier memory entered his mind, and he smiled as he took a bite out of his pizza.

But like many of his other memories, this was a marred one…

 _Luna was sitting on his lap, kissing him as the train pulled out of the station. Harry kissed her back happily, it had been a while since he had seen her; he had been hoping to see her during the summer when his original plans to just leave the Dursleys had been simpler before the Dementors had kissed them, but Dumbledore's interference and insistence that he stay in either the Burrow or the shithole his godfather had left him._

 _The Order was welcome to it, though many of the books were going to find their way into his possession after he'd had them checked out. The great thing about Luna was, unlike other people, she was not judgemental. Her large eyes were able to see things others refused._

 _Many on the train and on the platform, when they had recognised him, had frozen and had muttered to themselves, looking at him with fear. Harry knew they believed the lies Fudge was having the Prophet spew out about him and Dumbledore, but he wasn't bothered by it - it frustrated him, yes, but he pitied them more._

 _Luna knew he was telling the truth. It was, apparently, in his eyes, so she said though she did ask him why he hadn't simply sworn a magical oath like he had when the Goblet of Fire had drawn out his name. Harry's reply was simple, "Voldemort will show himself eventually. Besides, a kick to their complacency may come in handy."_

 _Luna hadn't liked it but she had to admit he had a point; the magical world had become so used to Voldemort being "dead" and the way they followed the lies the Ministry spewed out daily without any proof spoke volumes._

" _So you were at the Burrow, how was it?" Luna asked mischievously,_

" _Boring, though Weasley was entertaining; he tried to break into my trunk," Harry replied with a shrug._

" _He tried to break into your trunk? And you caught him?" Luna shook her head. "I knew he had a Wrackspurt infection, but I didn't know it was that bad."_

" _Worse," Harry grinned, uncaring about the creatures Luna saw. To him, it was one of the many things that made her special and unique._

 _Luna grinned back and then her smile faded, making him concerned. "Harry, what do you plan to do when He comes out?"_

" _I don't know yet," Harry replied softly as he stroked her hair, but any further discussion went out when the door slid open. Harry looked up and lifted an eyebrow when he saw Malfoy standing in the doorway, a prefect badge gleaming on his chest of his smart new robes. As always the Slytherin had a superior looking smirk on his face, a smirk which became malicious when he saw Luna._

" _So, Blood traitor, still with the Halfblood?" Malfoy sneered._

 _A stream of dangerous spells each one more vicious and dangerous than the previous one went through Harry's mind, but he held down the urge to injure the stupid wizard in front of him. "Hey, Malfoy, still walking around with the hard on you've got for your dad?" Harry retaliated; it was childish and his retort didn't strike him as witty by any means._

 _Malfoy's superior expression fell instantly and he leaned forward in a manner Harry guessed was supposed to be intimidating, but it struck the seated wizard and witch in the carriage as kind of pathetic. "You'll get yours, Potter-," Malfoy spat, but Harry took out his wand and Malfoy instantly shut up. He remembered the spells he'd been hit with from that wand, and it had been so painful and humiliating that Malfoy had found it hard to go near Potter again for months, but he had recovered now but the fear was still there._

" _Malfoy, when are you going to see your threats mean nothing? What is the point of you coming in here, spouting off a few threats and then running off?" Harry asked, but then he sighed before he flicked his wand and sent Crabbe and Goyle out and then sealed the door. "Sit down," he said to the nervous blond._

" _Why?" Malfoy asked, hiding his nervousness behind a veneer of smug superiority. "Are you going to plead for mercy?"_

" _Not on your life. I don't beg people, I know it does no good especially in this case; Voldemort wants me dead, and he won't stop because I beg him to leave me alone," Harry said._

 _Draco ground his teeth. This conversation was not going the way he'd hoped or anticipated._

" _You're a pampered little boy, Draco; if you join the Death Eaters you'll soon find out Voldemort does not reward his followers. He punishes them, torments them, and he gets away with it because of his Slytherin ancestry and his power. You refuse to open your eyes and see that your little world surrounds only yourself and that all the things you value mean nothing out there."_

" _Are you telling me that I can't handle it?" Draco snapped, shaking in rage. "I am capable, Potter. I can handle it. I have wanted to join the Death Eaters for years! I was trained to follow the Dark Lord's teachings long before I could even walk! I will be on the winning side, and I will make sure you live long enough for me to prove I am on the winning side!"_

 _Harry flicked his wand and Malfoy was propelled out of his seat and was stuck to the wall. "Be careful, Draco," Harry warned, deftly flicking his wand to compel the other wizard not to speak about this to anyone; he had enough on his mind with the Horcruxes, Dumbledore sticking his nose in, and the unsubtle ambitions of the Weasleys, and Voldemort out there without Snape attacking him because of this spoilt, ignorant fool. "Don't forget I'm in charge in this compartment, not you. Now….get out!" Harry flicked his wand and threw Malfoy out of the compartment which Luna locked and charmed to make the three Slytherins move on._

 _Malfoy screamed through the door. "I WILL MAKE YOU AND THAT BLOOD TRAITOR PAY, POTTER! WHEN I'M THROUGH WITH YOU, YOU WILL REGRET BECOMING MY ENEMY!"_

 _With that, he was gone._

 _Harry shook his head, and Luna took his hand. "Were you trying to persuade him to see he is out of his depth?" she asked._

" _No," Harry shook his head. "I was trying to make him see I see him as a waste of space."_

" _You know he'll tell Snape about what you did, unless of course, that spell you used to compel him to keep his mouth closed wears off, right?"_

 _Harry wasn't surprised Luna knew about the compulsion, but pretty soon Malfoy was out of their minds and the last threat the blond uttered was quickly relegated to their memories of really bad threats._

 _But in the years to come, Harry Potter would regret not killing Malfoy before he carried out that threat…._

The fifth year at Hogwarts was shit, but then after the summer he'd had it was an omen of how badly things could guess. No-one at the school believed Voldemort was back; it was his own fault really, he had been too exhausted to show a memory of what had happened in the graveyard beyond saying Voldemort was back and he hadn't had a chance to do anything before Dumbledore sent him off quickly before he could recover.

The end result was clouded by rumour and lies, some of them down to Fudge.

Harry ignored them, but he couldn't ignore the fact Dolores Umbridge, the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister was at the school as the new Defence teacher and she was out for blood. His. After the first lesson of having to put up with her crap, how she had taunted him constantly while trying to make him say or do something really stupid. After that, he had simply cast a few spells on himself to stop Umbridge from noticing him in her classroom.

Classroom? Nothing she did in those so-called lessons was teaching. She was simply making them read and reread a book on defence by an author who should never have been born, it was a waste of parchment and ink. Hermione Granger had tried to start a club to compensate for the bad teachings, but while Granger was good she was not a teacher; from what he had heard she was actually very impatient and she treated everyone who couldn't perform a spell right as a retard.

Eventually they were caught, but Harry knew next to nothing about the consequences though information about Umbridge's Blood quill reached his ears, though he blanked it out.

Meanwhile, Harry and Luna spent more time with each other, and during those moments Harry fell more and more in love with the fourth year. As the year wore on, Harry began to feel that his guesses about his future as a thief became more doubtful. Every moment he spent with Luna and Harry became more convinced he could have a normal life.

Malfoy was a problem, but Harry had already expected that; most of Malfoy's words were pure bluster, yes, but until Voldemort showed himself there was little Draco could say or do. Much of Malfoy's anger came from Sirius Black's will. Harry had gone to Gringotts whether or not Dumbledore liked it, and he had made it clear to the Malfoys he was not giving the Black legacy up for them.

Meanwhile, Harry had more luck destroying the Horcruxes. He had known about the Room of Requirement for a long time, but he had never had a Horcrux detector, but when he found the right configuration for the room where the Horcrux was hidden in, he took it down to the Chamber of Secrets which was the deepest point of the school where he wouldn't be disturbed. Once he was there, Harry hit the tiara he knew from portraits and busts was the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw. Harry was upset that he had needed to destroy one of the artefacts of Ravenclaw, but it had needed be to done.

As the months wore on, more and more signs of Voldemort's return became clearer though the Ministry refused to admit it, some of which were not even known even known though the Azkaban breakout made it obvious something big was happening. Harry had access to the sources in the DOM, giving him a great deal of information. The Unspeakables were preparing for war, though it was unlikely they would come out directly until later. It wasn't their way. Croaker would probably provide information taken from sources that were more efficient than Severus Snape, and unless the situation called for it then the Unspeakables would only get involved if they had no alternative.

Throughout the year, Harry had noticed something odd about Dumbledore. He was used to the old wizard staring at him contemplatively, he had seen the loss over the previous years he had been at Hogwarts, but not in his fifth year. Dumbledore was going out of his way to avoid looking at him, but as the year passed the old wizard was looking at him much like a scientist trying to study something and couldn't make much sense out of it.

Those looks grew when news of Mr Weasley being killed by a snake which caused the Weasley family to leave the school for a few weeks to handle the arrangements - Harry hadn't known Mr Weasley well enough, in fact he had thought the man foolish for not truly checking his facts about the muggle world and constantly muddling the names of common items but he had liked the man even if he had held him at arms length since he had no idea if the man was even in on the plan to steal from the Potter vault - for his burial, but Dumbledore had not said or done anything to give him an idea of what those looks were about.

And then it happened. Voldemort attacked the Ministry, specifically sending his followers into the Department of Mysteries. Unfortunately he was unaware that the Unspeakables had worked on their precious department's defences. Many of the Death Eaters were in the Inner circle and they were killed by the defences. When the DOM came to make their statement which outlined their explanation, they made it clear that they had been watching out for the signs of the Dark Lord's return for a while, and they had chosen to grow their defences in preparation. Harry didn't know what had made Croaker decide to heavily defend the DOM, but because so many Death Eaters were killed and Voldemort himself was seen in public by Fudge and nearly half of the Ministry workers it wasn't long before everyone woke up to the threat.

Dumbledore's looks became more intense and pretty soon he stopped his discretion and actively stared at him across the hall at meals. Harry had ignored them, while all the time mentally practising his occlumency and stopping the old wizard from poking around in his mind. Occasionally he lost his patience with Dumbledore and just shoved the probes the old wizard sent to make the man understand he needed his privacy and yet Dumbledore still carried on.

The appearance of Voldemort had frightened the Ministry into action. But Harry had wondered at the time if it was already too late or them. Fudge's stupidity and his stance of basically sticking his head in the sand hadn't worked.

But the worst was to come.

Luna and Xeno's deaths.

* * *

I've recently got back to watching Babylon 5 regularly, and if there is one thing I happen to like its the Shadow philosophy - that to evolve and to grow, people have to fight.

In Mr Morden's words, it's like knocking over an ant-hill; every new generation becomes stronger, and the ant-hill becomes stronger.

In Harry's mind, he is strong because he became cunning enough to live on the streets, something Voldemort himself was capable of doing only Harry took it to the next level.

Harry has grown into his own person, but Dumbledore will make an appearance in the next chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

The usual, I don't own Harry Potter.

PappyOldGuy - Thank you. I hope you'll find this one just as entertaining.

KnowPein - Hopefully you'll be delighted with this chapter. There will be flashbacks but they are meant to show what happened to Harry during the last years of his time there.

Yaw6113 - Patience.

* * *

The Thief.

Harry woke up when he heard the phone ringing, and he needed a moment to let his brain wake up and he jumped out of bed, stumbling as he did before he grabbed his dressing gown and went down the stairs. As he walked down slowly to give his legs time to properly recover, the young wizard wondered who was calling him. He didn't have many friends, and he never really gave his phone number to anyone because he didn't want to be bothered by anybody.

When the sound of the ringing grew louder, he shouted, "Alright, alright, I'm coming! Give me a moment!"

Finally, Harry reached the phone and he sighed when he saw the number was coming in blank.

Five weeks after the burglary in the art dealers' home, Harry was still lying low and he still had no idea who was trying to break into his property. At first when he hadn't found any more trace of who was trying to find him for a while, he had made the assumption they'd moved on or they'd decided not to try their luck if they came across the different spells he'd placed on his home and activated in response but his gut feeling told him otherwise.

In the end Harry decided to wait and see - he didn't see the point in wasting his resources, and besides while the magical world thought he was dead after going on that rampage, if he tried looking for whoever had tried to get through the wards, it might raise a few red flags in the wrong places, and Harry knew Dumbledore was still alive; he wished he knew what the old man's stance towards him was, but he wasn't going to take a chance.

When Voldemort had returned, he had stepped up his training to deal with the Dark Lord and his followers. He hadn't done it because he wanted to be a hero and that it was expected for him to fight, he had done it because he had wanted to keep Luna safe. With Voldemort gone, Harry had still continued practicing his skills in order to keep ready in case something happened; his jobs that Croaker gave him were often dangerous enough, and he had lost count of the number of times he had come dangerously close to being identified.

Harry wondered if the person who was trying to get into his home was a witch or wizard who had seen him during those missions given to him by the DOM, and had tracked him down out of idle curiosity to see who he was. He always used a disguise to make sure his more distinctive features were hidden. Thanks to the Daily Prophet, there were probably few who didn't know what he looked like and if he was trying to remain "dead" in the eyes of the magical world it would be foolish not to be disguised.

During those five weeks, Harry carried on with his life. He went to college and carried on with his lessons, he also went out of the townhouse armed with a sketchbook and pencils, and he would spend hours either in Trafalgar square or on the river, sketching old bridges, ships, boats, and anything else he saw. His proficiency with the mind arts helped provide him with a photographic memory which helped him make his sketches; all he needed to do was look at something closely, taking a 'snapshot', and then he would draw it out.

Harry's art teacher, a serene looking woman in her early thirties, looked with awe at his drawings in the sketchbook when he showed them to her. "These are amazing," she commented, "they're very well detailed…Did you use a camera?"

"Something like that," he'd replied.

Harry picked up the phone, fully prepared to blast whomever it was, when he heard the voice on the other end.

"Harry, is that you?"

Harry sighed as he recognised the voice. "Bester?"

"It's good to hear your voice. It's been a while."

Harry grit his teeth together impatiently. "What do you want?"

"Oooh, sounds like someone got out from the wrong side of the bed today," Bester teased him, and Harry closed his eyes and counted to 7 as quickly as he could before he lost his mind, but Bester's voice became more serious, "I need to speak to you. A job has come up—."

"What kind of job?" Harry asked as he tried to humour the other man. He and Bester were not friends, they were more like acquaintances, they had been in the same gang growing up, and they'd learnt all the burglary and pickpocket techniques they could before they went their separate ways but they did occasionally team up to do a job. One of the last jobs they'd done was during the summer before Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts.

"Can't talk right now," Bester said in a manner that said he was doing the 'spy routine,' where he would be looking left and right all over the place to make sure no-one was overhearing him, though truthfully Harry couldn't see the point. "Look, come to Trafalgar square, be there in about two hours time. Wait for me by the statue of Nelson."

Harry rolled his eyes, Bester was speaking to him as though he didn't know a thing about the country's history. "Alright," he said as patiently as he could manage. "I'll be there. And it better be good."

"Yeah, yeah."

"No, I mean it," Harry retorted before he sighed and made his farewells. The moment he put the phone back, he sighed and leaned against the wall. "Fuck! What's he getting me into now?" he asked himself.

0000000000000000000

After a quick shower and a bite to eat, Harry had gotten out of the townhouse and was on his way to Trafalgar square as quickly as he could, casting the spells on his home as he did in case his 'intruder' came back. During the journey, Harry wondered what Bester wanted this time.

The guy who'd trained Bester and Harry, the guy who had trained others (Harry didn't know whether he was alive and still doing it, if he were in prison, or if he'd retired someplace), had drilled it into their brains they had to be careful with how they chose their jobs. Bester and Harry were two of those thieves of the gang who had truly taken the lessons onboard, the ones who hadn't…. well, neither Harry nor Bester paid them any heed.

But Bester…..He hadn't seen the other thief in a long time since they'd handed each other their numbers; Bester had been amused by how paranoid and almost isolationist Harry was behaving, which was rich considering how Bester loved those James Bond movies and whatever else had spies in them, but Harry hadn't heard back from the other guy since.

He was also curious about this 'job' Bester had mentioned. It was bound to be a big one. Bester was like him, he was very careful about what he chose to get involved in. Harry wondered what the job was, but he also thought about what he'd been hearing about Bester recently from his sources, he knew that the other thief had been dabbling in different kinds of jobs that involved gangs, but he knew about a 'Pillow case robber' that had been operating near Whitechapel for a month and he was sure that it was Bester who had dropped out of sight for a short time only to appear again, so the timing fit.

Harry guessed Bester was going to push him into a job involving one of those big jobs, that meant a gang. Harry closed his eyes at the thought of socialising with others. It brought back the memories he hated of Hogwarts, how everyone wanted to be his friend when they realised he was the "boy who lived" and were more awed by his fame than anything about himself, which was off-putting. Fortunately, it didn't take long for them to stop.

Bester and he were not friends.

Guys like them didn't have friends, sad as it sounded, but it was the truth. Harry just wondered what kind of job Bester had in mind. He could have said no, he wasn't interested, but since it was extremely rare for Bester to ask for him to join in Harry was intrigued, and he was worried as well. He hadn't heard from Bester for a long time, so he was surprised the other thief had come back into his life. The timing between his discovery of someone trying to break into his home, trying to lay low after that burglary….. Harry knew Bester was not a wizard, so he knew he wasn't involved with the house, but he was in a paranoid mood.

When he got out of the Tube station, Harry walked to the statue and looked around. It was a big crowd, even this early in the morning. Harry couldn't see any sign of the other man. But since Bester had a 'spy routine' where he would hide somewhere that gave him a great view of the area where he could see everything and anyone coming to meet him wouldn't even know he was there.

Harry sighed at the thought of having to play games with a muggle, if any other witch or wizard found out he about that he'd be a laughingstock.

"There you are!" Harry looked up immediately.

Bester had crept up on him from behind the statue of Nelson, grinning. Bester was a fairly short, stocky man, a complete contrast to Harry who was tall and thin, and he was dressed in a neat looking but a casual black jacket, jeans and a white shirt. Bester sat down next to him.

"This is a surprise," Harry said without even offering the other thief his hand to shake while he focused his power of legilimency to brush against Bester's mind to see his surface thoughts. In moments he had the full story and knew that Bester was legit.

"It's been a while though, Harry," Bester smiled and then turned around and tilted his head at the sight of the pigeons milling about, bobbing their heads. Harry followed his gaze, watching the pigeons as they went on their way, seemingly uncaring about the world around them but Harry knew, thanks to his animagus form, pigeons were more aware of the world than people gave them credit for.

"Rats with wings," Bester commented offhandedly.

"What?"

"the Pigeons, seagulls, they're all the same; they scavenge around us for food, they roost in rooftops and chimneys. In many ways we're a lot like them," Bester observed as he glanced sideways at Harry.

Harry didn't say a word. He had a good idea where Bester was going with this. Besides, he was used to Bester going off into these little tangents and talking about fuck all. In a way, it reminded Harry of Luna, but where Luna made people think she was weird she was very insightful and philosophical. Bester was just philosophical. Harry knew what Bester was saying, it wasn't difficult to work out. They were both thieves, and like the birds around them in the square, they were always on the look out for cash to live on, and they didn't care if the money was hard earned or not. They just took it, like the birds took food.

Bester went on. "You and I break into people's homes, people who rarely, if ever, bother to think about the lives of others. Anyway," he broke off his little sermon and stood up. "These's a cafe not far from here, I don't want this discussed outside."

Harry raised a brow, seeing the little contradiction. It was okay for them to both sit in a cafe and talk, in a rented building surrounded by others, but out here Bester believed they were being spied on, but he'd learnt a long time ago to always let the man have his own way or else he'd become unbearable to be around.

Standing up quietly, Harry followed the other man to a cafe. The moment he walked through the door, Harry could see why Bester had decided to hold their little meeting here. It was a bookshop with a cafe added on, and there was a convenient upper storey. Harry and Bester got their drinks, paying separately. Bester didn't spend money on anyone even if he needed them for something big, and Harry because he knew Bester wouldn't spend any cash on him even if he needed him for something big.

When they finally found a table isolated from everywhere else, Bester took an experimental sip of his coffee, wincing a little at either the taste or the temperature. Harry clutched his own cup, feeling the heat before he put it down on the table between him and Bester, deciding to drink his hot chocolate in a bit.

"Okay, what is it you've got in mind?" Harry asked him, knowing it would be suspicious if he didn't.

Bester leaned forward. "How would you like to rob a jewellery shop?"

Harry lifted an eyebrow again. "Go on," he said.

"I need a single partner to help me break into a jewellery shop in the next four days," Bester said seriously as he got straight down to business, and he pulled out a crisp white envelope out of his coat pocket and passed it to Harry, who took it but put it into his coat, knowing better than to open it here. "That envelope contains the basics of the plan to burgle the shop."

"You said a single partner, what do you mean?"

Bester took a deep breath. "I've decided to go solo on my burglaries," he admitted. "It hasn't been easy working with a team. I'm always worried something bad is going to happen, or one of us will make a mistake that at the time was inconsequential, but later turns out to be the biggest mistake you could have ever made."

"I know the feeling," Harry said.

Bester ignored him. "On my last job with a team, one of the gang got cold feet while another nearly left behind traces of DNA for the police to find," he said. "I don't want that to happen again. That's why I want to work alone."

"But if I help you with this one, you won't be working alone," Harry pointed out and Bester nodded at the logical reply. "True," Bester replied. "But for this particular kind of job, I need a partner. Someone who has done the kind of burglary before," he paused slightly as he became aware, very quickly, of a teenage girl walking nearby and he went quiet as she passed and he didn't speak again until she was out of earshot. "I'd rather have your help than anybody else's."

"That's all well and good, but why choose me?" Harry asked, knowing the answer already but he needed to ask otherwise it would have seemed suspicious.

Bester didn't look exasperated yet at the questioning. "I know you," he said simply. "Besides, this kind of burglary is up your street."

Harry considered. The plan Bester had in mind for the burglary was so straightforward, and since he had known already that the other burglar was tired of other criminals and their reckless mistakes he could see the truth. It hadn't been just once he'd met someone either reckless or green, but the reason Bester wanted his help was more down to nostalgia than anything else. He wanted to partner with someone one last time, but he wanted it to with someone who was more experienced.

"Okay, I'll help you," he said, he didn't say it was simply to give himself something to do. He was getting tired of waiting for the heat to die down so he could make any kind of headway in selling the art dealer spoils. He was tired of not being around any new Things, but more importantly, he was tired of waiting for whomever was trying to break into his house to make an appearance. He wanted something to distract himself, and this burglary would serve that purpose nicely.

Bester smiled happily. "Great."

The pair stayed in the cafe for another hour. They chatted about their heists and some of their other activities. Keeping Bester ignorant about him being a wizard was easy, and he also made sure not to speak about the art dealer heist. It had garnered a vast amount of attention already, he didn't want Bester to know too much anyway.

In return, Bester told him about some of his work, and as he spoke about the various burglaries and robberies he was a part of, Harry had already guessed Bester's involvement in some of them, though he knew about some of the others. They eventually stopped talking about their criminal lives and started chatting about their own lives, but their attempts were pitiful. They simply were not good at small talk.

A waitress approached with their bill. The pair of them had purchased something to eat, now they were leaving they had to pay their bill. Harry decided to foot it, but as he picked up the piece of paper with the final sum he had to pay, he found a piece of paper with the girl's number on it and he looked at her before he put it back down and gave her the cash.

Annoyed, the girl stalked off.

Bester looked amused at Harry. "Not interested?"

"No."

Bester laughed, and Harry decided to stun him. "I had a girlfriend a few years ago," he admitted. "She was murdered by a bastard who wanted me dead."

Bester stopped laughing.

They didn't talk about anything else until they parted.

000000000000000000

Harry opened the door to his townhouse and he kicked off his shoes, and he went into the kitchen to make some coffee. He had been in a bad mood all day since leaving the cafe. The girl who'd tried to give her phone number out had not really bothered him, but Bester's amusement had been the last straw.

Once he grabbed his coffee, Harry went into the living room and started to drink it. When he had drained the last droplets of coffee, Harry sat back in his seat, holding the small necklace Luna had given to him as a gift (he still remembered losing his temper with Molly Weasley for trying to take the gift from him, believing that it was a trap sent out by a Death Eater) for his fifteenth birthday.

Harry sighed as he found himself lost in a memory….

 _The funeral service was simple. There were baskets and vases full of Luna and Xneo's favourite flowers, and there were also pictures of the family, especially of Luna's beloved mother, the same mother that had caused so much pain at her own passing. The passing that had made other people think Luna was weird because she spouted off nonsense but in truth helped define the girl as a lovely person who just had a different point of view while she buried her pain of her mother's passing._

 _Harry had spent over a week and a half looking for the right Wizarding crematorium for the funeral. Although he would have loved having her buried in the ground, the thought of Luna and Xeno both buried under the ground, rotting…. it filled him with disgust. He didn't want to think of the Lovegoods as decomposing corpses. He wanted to remember them as they had always been, and let the decomposition happen to him while he aged and then eventually died._

 _Besides he had learnt that the Death Eaters openly mocked the dead and forcibly exhumed the coffins in a graveyard, sometimes the sicker members of their ranks would have it away with the bodies, but more often Voldemort himself would transform the corpses into Inferi. The very idea of seeing Luna and Xeno transformed into Inferi disgusted him enough just like he had been disgusted with the notion of that sick motherfucker transforming the remains of Lily and James Potter into Inferi. When he was finished here, he would carry out the arrangements to have the Potters cremated properly._

 _What he couldn't grasp was while this behaviour was known to the DMLE and the Ministry, no-one was punished._

 _Dumbledore's philosophy of forgive and forget was foolish. Anyone who performed necrophilia on dead children didn't deserve to be allowed to walk, never mind breathe, but then magical intelligence was an oxymoron._

 _Thinking of the downside of magical intellect made Harry remember who else was at the funeral._

 _Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see the unwelcome groups of the Order of the Phoenix and a small entourage of reporters and Ministry of Magic officials with both Dumbledore and Fudge at the head, but he ignored the though he had resisted the urge to grab one of those quills and shove it down their throats. How dare they come here! He hadn't invited them, Fudge had brought them here for some stupid reason Harry just didn't want to find out. He had barely said a word all day, but he knew that the reporters were taking note of everything that happened, they had also asked him about his clothing choice._

 _The Wizarding world didn't dress in black traditionally for funerals, but thanks to his muggle upbringing Harry didn't know and frankly didn't care what the wizards dressed in. He also didn't care about the disapproving looks Dumbledore sent his way at the clothing choice. Well, Harry thought to himself privately, you dress how I want, and you can dress how you want._

 _Harry had made the eulogy for both of the Lovegoods, highlighting how they had treated him like one of the family and that was even before he and Luna had gotten together, but apart from that he hadn't said more than two words to Dumbledore or Fudge, and he was hoping to keep it that way. He had nothing he wanted to say to them._

 _Unfortunately, he had needed to say a few harsh words to Hermione Granger. For some reason Harry couldn't work out, Dumbledore had decided to bring Granger and the Weasley family to the funeral, his best guess for later would be Dumbledore or Mrs Weasley had put them up to once more trying to rope them into their company after they had failed so many times before. His money was on Dumbledore personally, he probably wanted the idiots to spy on him._

 _He didn't have a clue why Dumbledore had decided Hermione Granger was an asset but she was someone to avoid._

 _Harry had already gotten the belief that the Weasley family was one of the most obnoxious broods on planet Earth. The funeral proved it; Mrs Weasley kept muttering about the funeral arrangements, clearly not approving of them. Harry had almost broken the woman's neck when he had heard her speak; who the hell did she think she was to sneer at the arrangements of other people? This was a funeral, didn't she understand that?!_

 _Mr Weasley kept trying to tell his wife to shut her mouth, but she didn't, in the end Harry had done his level best to tune the disgusting family out while the twins tried to prank some of the people who had turned up at the funeral to 'liven things up a bit,' despite being sad Luna was dead themselves but they wanted to try to cheer people up, but fortunately one of their elder brothers stopped them. In a way Harry was grateful, but in another, he wished he had the chance to put those two clowns in their place. He could see they were upset Luna was dead but he didn't want to laugh, or to smile, to be amused today. He wanted to be upset._

 _Ron and Ginny Weasley were the worst. Ronald was moaning about the robes he had been forced to dress in - like most of their wardrobes, the robes the Weasley family were dressed in were ragged hand-me-downs, and complaining about the lack of food. This was a funeral, what did he expect, a buffet?_

 _Somehow Ginny Weasley was the worst. Harry knew from his relationship with Luna that Ginny had once been her childhood friends, but Ginny's constant game of 'marriage to the Boy-Who-Lived' had caused friction between the two girls since Luna was smart enough to see the redhead was becoming too obsessive about someone whom Ginny didn't even know, and as they grew older they found they had even less in common. It didn't help that Mrs Weasley, completely nonchalant about the pain Luna was going through when the blonde's mother died, 'subtly' urged Ginny to stop playing with Luna._

 _At the funeral, Ginny had no sadness that her old friend was dead. Far from it. The little slut was dressed in a tight fitting set of robes that clung to her stick like form so tightly Harry was amazed the girl could even breathe. But he was completely taken by surprise by the girl's attitude and her actions at the funeral. Didn't the Weasley have any kind of shame? Ginny kept trying to sit next to him, talk to him about 'moving on from Luna, and letting her (Ginny) take care of him.' The very thought alone nearly made him laugh._

 _Ha! The girl could barely look after herself, what made her think she could look after him? After about ten minutes of having to put up with this little whore, who kept trying to drape herself all over him, Harry had stood up and walked away to another seat and cast a few choice spells to keep the girl away from him._

 _Unfortunately, before he spoke the eulogy, Hermione Granger spoke to him and made him wish he had included spells geared towards her but since he hadn't anticipated the girl trying to psychoanalyse him and his loss for Luna and Xeno, it hadn't occurred to him but he wished he had, it would have helped him to avoid the attentions of a nosy, bossy girl who hadn't even known anything about the two who'd been murdered._

 _Granger kept trying to get him to talk about their losses, completely oblivious to the notion that he might not want to talk about it. Harry remembered how it had done….Harry had been trying to sit quietly and listened to the sermon - the wizard reading it had clearly been trained to be as philosophical and as solemn as a muggle priest, and he was reading it beautifully even if he had never met Luna or her father, when Hermione Granger came over and sat next to him. Harry had looked at her in surprise. He and Granger had never gotten along in all the time they'd known each other, she was a teacher's pet who believed herself to be superior because she could read but truthfully all she was doing was quoting books without thinking about putting the information into her own words._

 _But Harry really disliked her for her arrogance, her ideas that all of life's mysteries could be found out just by looking into a book, but he had overheard her snide comments which were sent towards Luna, and that was one reason why he thought her little show of sympathy was a fake._

 _He didn't know how she felt being here, and he didn't really care although he wished the Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry had not invited themselves here._

" _How are doing Harry?" she'd whispered, clearly trying to be sympathetic and sad about the murders on his behalf. Harry just wished she was genuine. "Physically, I'm fine," Harry had replied, keeping his eyes fixed on the wizard reading out the sermon, refusing to even look at the brunette witch. "Mentally…. you don't want to know."_

" _But I do want to know," Granger had replied, her voice rising slightly before she remembered where she was. "I've been reading books about grief, and I can tell that you're bottling everything up. It's not healthy for you to do that."_

 _Harry had shoved every ounce of anger he'd felt surging within him with every word. Who the fuck was Granger to tell him what he should and shouldn't feel? What, did she think he was being cold by not crying his eyes out? He had not stopped crying for days since he had discovered what had befallen the Lovegoods, and during the organisation of the funeral, he had driven himself nearly insane to handle the arrangements. He had few tears left. If Granger told him how to feel…."Go away," he said in a low whisper._

 _He had to get her away from him. His emotions were bubbling beneath the surface of his occlumency barriers, and they had been threatening to spill out with every comment, every moan, every observation the Weasley's and other made about the funeral. Now he had this annoying girl asking questions. He was not stupid, Granger always wanted knowledge. That just made the whole thing worse, she didn't care about grieving friends she just wanted to understand their grief._

 _He had just been entertaining the possibility of going out to kill HER parents, let her feel grief…. but he had felt ill just thinking about it. He wasn't a murderer who killed out of pettiness._

 _But….. he was just so angry and so numb, so tired._

 _Luna's death had hit him harder than anyone could even contemplate. When he had been with her, Harry had entertained the thought that marrying Luna could mean that he could have what he had wanted all of his life._

 _A family._

 _It came from growing up unloved, lonely. Thanks to Dumbledore, Pettigrew, Voldemort and Sirius, he had grown up with no-one to love him. He had grown stronger as a person, he had learnt how to steal at a very early age, he had learnt the world was not a bed of roses like Granger's parents had probably painted it to be when she'd been a toddler. But that did not mean he was not hoping for a way out, and Luna had given him what he had craved for years. Someone to love him, and someone he could love while Xeno had been the person Sirius had never been, a father figure though that was hardly Black's fault._

 _Harry blamed Black for some of what he'd had to go through as a kid, and he didn't know and just couldn't picture what a life with the former convict could have been like. He had barely known Black before he had been kissed by the Dementors, and the few moments they'd had were too brief for him to truly picture an alternative life._

 _But with Luna, he had wondered what it would be like to be married, to have kids (he had only hoped he didn't abuse them out of some deep rooted mental shit that the Dursleys had driven home) and just live a happy life with her while he'd either been a criminal or an Unspeakable._

 _Now Luna was gone and his hopes had gone down the drain. Harry had already thought he would be alone for the rest of his life, accumulating money and riches which would never be passed down to anyone unless he took someone under his wing, but it was the sheer brutality of the murder of the Lovegoods that had hit him hard._

 _And he was planning to use it to wipe the Death Eaters out._

 _All of them._

 _They had had too many second chances, they had frustrated and annoyed him in the past. They had threatened his life, the lives of so many, and the Wizarding world just let it happen._

 _Now Luna was dead._

 _Harry had already made some of his plans. He was going to drop out of Hogwarts. He had that right, he had completed the OWLs and was eligible enough to do that, and since the DOM would help him with his NEWTs if he decided to take them shortly so then Dumbledore or Fudge couldn't use that as an excuse to get him under their control. But he needed to get out of Hogwarts, he had to begin spying on the Death Eaters, he had to gather intelligence, to prepare. He planned to wage a one-man war of genocide, and unlike Voldemort, he had no plans to build an army._

 _Trouble was, he had to get through this funeral and get away from the Order of the Phoenix. They still believed he was just a clueless little kid that needed to be coddled until the end of the world._

" _What?" Granger's voice brought him back, and he'd stared at her with genuine pity before looking forward again. His request was simple enough, he wanted to be alone._

" _I said go away," he'd repeated. "I don't want to talk to you about your stupid books and what they say about grief. I'll talk if I want to, and not before."_

" _My books are not stupid!" she'd nearly shouted at him. "I am trying to help!"_

 _Liar, he'd thought angrily. You only want to know something so then you can check it off in your stupid books!_

" _Keep your voice down!" Harry had snapped back at her. "This is a funeral, but you and that bitch Molly Weasley seem to think you can say what you like, complain about everything when I am so tempted to curse all of you."_

" _You can't do magic outside of school-!"_

" _Don't care," Harry had sighed, mentally exhausted just by looking at Granger. "Please, go away. I don't want to talk about Luna or Xeno. Not right now." And even if I did, why would it be for you? he asked mentally._

" _But we want to help-!" Hermione had protested before Harry chuckled back at her, and stared at her with disdain. "We? What makes you think I want your help? What makes you think the Order of the Phoenix have ever helped me? They've hemmed me in, spied on me, interfered with my private time, and told me not to go to Luna and Xeno all because it's not safe, well it bloody wouldn't be safe if Albus Holier than Thou Dumbledore hadn't said wiping the Death Eaters out after the last war would be beneath the so-called light."_

 _Harry had closed his eyes by that point and turned back to face the front. "Go away, Granger. Please, forget your stubbornness, and just go. Give me peace. Luna was my girlfriend, and I want to grieve in private."_

" _But Harry, Luna wouldn't want you to bottle everything up-!" Granger had said before Harry interrupted her. "Don't tell me what to do, Granger. Tell me something, these books you read, did you plan to help counsel my grief out of sympathy, or did you just want me to talk to see if your books were right?"_

 _The look of anger and surprise on Grangers' face was worth it for him. "I am trying to help," she'd just repeated stubbornly, and Harry had just begun to realise that if he didn't get away from her then she would leave in a body bag. He was getting sick of everyone pushing him._

 _After a few more moments of trying to make him talk as part of her impromptu and inappropriate psychology session, Hermione had seen that she was not getting past his clear anger, so she decided to try another tack. "I saw you with Ginny," Granger had then gone on, "it's good, you moving on-."_

 _That was too much._

 _Harry sharply jabbed his wand point into her stomach, shutting her up. "Harry-," she'd protested but he'd interrupted her again by poking her harder in the chest. She gasped in pain._

" _Shut. The. Fuck. Up," he'd hissed at her. "How DARE you tell me to move on! Who the fuck do you think you are? Smartest witch of the age, bollocks to that! Did you know half of your teachers see you as an automaton who constantly reads and quotes verbatim from the book, and see you as nothing more than a pretender? Luna was the woman I loved, she was better than you are, at least she proved why she was a Ravenclaw compared to you! She didn't need to read and spout off stupid books one after another to be smart, and don't you dare say anything about her being weird. She was different, just like the Jews were to the Nazi's, to the blacks of America who had to fight for civil rights and had put up with all kinds of shit for centuries because they had darker skin. Who are you to judge someone just because they've got different ideas to what you've got? You are not intelligent, you are just a stupid, petty little girl who throws a tantrum whenever someone gets a mark higher in a test and hides behind the robes of older witches and wizards and accepts their drivel like a dog accepting scraps. How sad are you?_

" _And now you've got the nerve to tell me to talk to somebody about Luna's death, let me tell you if I did then it would not be with you, Dumbledore, Fudge, or anybody else in this fucked up world. I didn't want to talk about Luna's death, it's too raw and too fresh for my tastes. But no, you just have to poke your fucking nose into my business as though you've got the right, well you haven't you stupid bitch. I have had to put up with your stupid Order following me around everywhere. I know you're not genuine; you and everyone else didn't care about Luna or what she had seen when she had been younger, you never saw the pain she had to deal with every single day. I did. I still love Luna even now she's dead, and I am not going to go with some stupid bimbo now she's dead. Don't ever tell me who to love, it's none of your business. My love life is none of your business either, how dare you try to interfere in affairs that are none of your concern!" He had been using bigger words to get into her head._

 _To her credit, Granger had seemed taken aback by Harry's feverishly low rant, and she was rendered literally speechless. Fortunately, Harry was called up to deliver the eulogy._

 _Once the eulogy was over, Harry stepped down from the podium and sat down and watching the rest of the proceedings icily._

 _He watched in fascination as the wizarding undertakers slowly and reverently took the two coffins to a part of the hall that looked more like a shrine, and they left quickly before raising their wands and levitated the coffins while they kept them inside a bubble of magic that would prevent the flames from getting out of control, and preventing the ashes from spilling everywhere. Harry felt tears prickling in his eyes as he listened to some of Xeno and Luna's favourite music playing; to anyone other than Luna and Xeno, the music choices were beyond eccentric, but Harry would listen to that music everyday while he was there at the Rookery. At first, it had been surprising, but the more he listened to it he felt that it was a catchy tune._

 _Harry refused to look away as Luna and Xeno's coffins were incinerated slowly and created a fine dust which was slowly siphoned off into two urns. The sight made him clench his fists angrily._

 _He was going to kill whomever was responsible for Luna and Xeno's deaths. The prime suspects were the Death Eaters, but there were others he wouldn't put it past to be behind the murders._

 _Fudge for instance had probably been told by his stooges in the Ministry how apathetic he was to the so-called 'war effort' and some 'bright' individual might have gotten smart and believed if the Lovegoods died then he would fight to the bitter end._

 _It would be just like Fudge to cook up a plan like that without thinking about what it would do for him and his precious position. The revelation of Voldemort's confirmed return had completely destroyed Fudge's credibility. Fudge had stupidly staked his career on reports of Voldemort's return to be nothing but lies told by an attention-seeking teenager, but now the truth was out and it had ripped Fudge's career to pieces and now he was trying to hang onto what he had left._

 _Harry knew that Voldemort would have preferred to remain in the shadows ever since his return, giving him the time to really take Britain by storm while Fudge was blissfully oblivious to the signs of the Dark Lord's return to power. But the sighting of the Dark Lord in the Ministry atrium itself had put paid to those plans, and now he was moving openly. There had already been a number of attacks in both the magical world and the muggle world._

 _Fudge was out of his depth. All those pamphlets sent out by the Ministry to various homes, they were only good for toilet paper. They were useless, and Harry just could not work out the logic of the Ministry in posting them. Sure, they described in detail some of the spells and what the Inferi and the Dementors did, but that was it. All they basically said was to contact the Aurors and the Ministry if they encountered Death Eater activity without actually telling them they should be prepared to defend themselves, but Fudge was barely hanging onto his position which was now hanging by threads, so he would probably become desperate enough to think murdering an innocent girl who happened to be Harry Potter's girlfriend just to get him fighting was a smart move, but making the murders so brutal…_

 _Harry also regarded the Order with suspicion as well. He didn't trust them, in fact, he had a feeling some of them wanted to use him for their own personal gain, all of them, not just Dumbledore. Harry only hoped Dumbledore hadn't decided to make the mistake of murdering Luna and Xeno just to become a warrior for the so-called 'light' which meant becoming Dumbledore's puppet._

 _When Harry was given the urns after slipping on a pair of sunglasses so no-one could see any sign of his tears, he took them and placed them inside an expanded pocket of his overcoat and he stood up with just a murmured sentence thanking the undertakers for their work, and then he stood up to leave and walk out of the crematorium but Fudge and his entourage instantly got in the way._

" _Harry, my dear boy," Fudge's voice was suitably downcast, but because Harry knew the little idiot was a consummate politician, able to adopt various moods when appropriate Harry knew he was not sincere. Did the man really think his temper tantrum and the way he'd denied Voldemort return had been forgotten? Did Fudge really think this was going to work?_

 _Still, Harry had the chance of looking into Fudge's mind. It was easy really, even with the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement there, all he had to do was wear a pair of sunglasses which would obscure Bones's vision of him reading Fudge's mind, though why she was there he didn't know; he guessed Bones was there to promise him the murderers who'd killed Luna and Xeno would be punished. Harry doubted that; the Magical world had once had the opportunity to punish the Death Eaters and their allies long ago, they'd failed. The DMLE didn't have the best clear-up rate, and after the way they had treated him in the past, Harry wouldn't trust any Auror with his life. All they'd have needed to do was kill the families of the Death Eaters in front of the eyes of the members who had the Mark branded on their forearms, and then they'd be killed._

 _Exterminated._

 _What Bones, Fudge, Dumbledore and others failed to realise was the softly - softly approach was not going to work in ending the way and preventing more people from joining Voldemort. No, the best way was to make everyone frightened of the consequences. But Dumbledore, Fudge, and Bones were weak._

" _Minister," Harry greeted while hiding some of his disappointment behind his occlumency barriers. Fudge had nothing to do with the Lovegood murders, he hadn't commissioned them. Shame. He had hoped for an excuse to murder someone today, he was boiling beneath the surface._

" _Dreadful business, the death of the Lovegoods. Dreadful," Fudge said, repeating himself._

" _Why are you here, Fudge?" Harry asked rudely, really not in the mood to pander to a politician any longer when he just wanted to leave and be alone._

 _Fudge was affronted by the rudeness. "I-I beg your pardon! I am trying to offer condolences-,"_

" _Don't insult me," Harry's voice was a harsh whisper that immediately shut the Minister of Magic up in his tracks better than any angry yell could ever hope to manage. "If you were really here to offer condolences, then you wouldn't have brought an entourage of reporters and photographers with you. Why? So then you lot could see me upset for Luna's death? Or because you could have me standing beside you, promising to endorse you, to help you?"_

 _Even Fudge couldn't mistake the sneer behind his words there, but his paling complexion made it all worth it. Harry knew he had laid the whole thing out nicely, he had seen it in Fudge's sorry excuse for a brain. The little Minister looked at Bones for help and advice, but the head of the DMLE refused to look at him._

 _Harry turned his attention to her. "Why are you here?"_

 _Amelia Bones' voice was just as harsh, but she was keeping her voice level so as not to blow it like Fudge had. "I came here to assure you we are going to do all we can to bring the murderers of the Lovegoods to justice."_

 _Harry raised an eyebrow and just nodded, not trusting himself to speak as Bones confirmed his suspicions. Really, politicians were easy to work out once you got the hang of it. Ignoring the Ministry entourage, Harry walked off. It might have been seen as cowardly, but he had just about had enough of this miserable backwater world with their stupid politicians and their empty promises, besides he didn't have time to listen to them._

 _Unfortunately, Dumbledore walked up to him._

" _Harry, my boy," he said sombrely as was fitting for the occasion; unlike Fudge, Harry didn't bother working out if Dumbledore was being sincere or not. The man was an inveterate manipulator. He was capable of hiding his true feelings beneath a mask, just like Harry could, so Harry had a much harder time reading him than he did with Fudge._

" _Headmaster," Harry greeted shortly. He knew why Dumbledore was at the funeral and it had nothing to do with Luna one little bit, and he wasn't looking forwards to this._

 _Dumbledore inclined his head in greeting. "My boy, we are here to take you in for protection-," the old wizard began but he was quickly interrupted by Fudge, who was nearby along with the others of his entourage and had overheard. "No, Dumbledore," Fudge said quickly. "The Ministry is the best decider on young Harry's future. I'm sure we can find him a good family-."_

" _No, Cornelius," Dumbledore interrupted quickly. "That must not happen."_

 _Harry lifted a brow again, he was sure he had been the only one to notice the exasperation on the old wizard's face as Fudge began speaking. But this was not the time to wonder just what kind of stress Fudge had placed on the old wizard. Last year Dumbledore had placed a lock on his magic, and he could very well have been killed or worse by the Dursleys. He had no intention of letting that happen again, besides with Fudge he didn't even want to imagine what kind of things the Minister would do. He hadn't looked that far into Fudge's mind, he had just scanned some of the surface thoughts because he had needed to get in an get out before Bones realised what he was doing._

 _Knowing Fudge, Harry had little doubt if the Minister had his way then he would be placed with one of the so-called "repentant" Death Eater's families, who had "promised" they would take care of him without even considering the dangers._

 _But that was not going to happen. Harry just wasn't ready to wage war._

 _At that point, Dumbledore had managed to succeed in getting Fudge to back off, and the Minister looked out of his depth and embarrassed visibly that he had lost face in front of the reporters but for the moment he had been rendered quiet enough._

" _Harry," Dumbledore said, "I am sorry for your loss, but you have to see that it is simply too dangerous for you and for other people."_

 _Harry just stood there, standing still like a statue carved from ice as he glared at Dumbledore, but he said nothing. He could feel Dumbledore's probes bouncing off of his barriers._

" _It is important that you come with us, we can protect you," Dumbledore went on, pausing when he thought he saw the young wizard raise an eyebrow before his expression became icy once more. "I have also heard some disquieting beliefs you have, that you believe that strength comes through conflict. You need to realise that sort of mindset is dangerous. We can help you see through that."_

 _Harry was surprised Dumbledore had even chosen to reveal to anyone outside of the Order and the group who'd heard him at the Burrow about his philosophy, but he imagined that Dumbledore was trying to embarrass him in front of the Ministry and the Daily Prophet, but he was wasting his time; Harry didn't care about how others viewed him and his philosophy._

 _He knew he was right._

" _And how do you propose to help me? Do you plan on just shoving me into a bedroom in a house, locked up and unable to leave? I have been free for most of my childhood," he said, seeing Dumbledore's face pale when he realised he had blown it by forgetting the press when he glanced casually at the reporters standing not far away. "I am not going to give that up for you, for anyone."_

 _With that, he turned and walked away, mentally spelling his body to remove any potential Portkeys Dumbledore or Fudge or anyone else had cast on him, any tracking charms and anything else._

 _But Dumbledore was not above using psychological guilt tripping. "Yes, and Miss Lovegood paid the price, would you want anyone else to suffer in the same way?" he asked Harry's retreating back._

 _Harry stiffened and stopped in surprise at hearing the emotional blackmail, barely hearing the shocked protests from the Order; they might support Dumbledore against Voldemort, but that didn't mean they had to like what he was saying at the best of times, and try as he might Dumbledore could not stop people from thinking for themselves._

 _The Order knew Dumbledore had just hit a new low, and they did not like it one little bit._

" _You can still find love with someone else, my boy," Dumbledore went on, digging an even bigger and deeper hole for himself. "With us, you will be spending time with Miss Granger and Miss Weasley-."_

 _That was too much for Harry. He turned around and rushed towards Dumbledore, flicking his wand as he went and creating a magical barrier around the pair of them, and punched Dumbledore right in the nose, causing the old wizard to drop to the ground, cradling his broken nose. Dumbledore had been taken aback by the sudden move and since Harry hadn't gotten too far away it was too late for the old wizard to do anything except getting punched._

 _That and physical assaults was practically non-existent in the magical world._

 _Mrs Weasley screamed, and Granger was not far behind, but Harry ignored them just like he ignored Bones and a triumphant Fudge._

" _Now you've done it, I'll have you sent to Azkaban for this, Potter!" Fudge's voice was thick with glee._

" _Mr Potter, you are under arrest for the assault of Albus Dumbledore, Head of Wizengamot-," Harry tuned out Bone's posturing as she tried along with her Aurors to get through the shield he'd set up._

 _Harry ignored them all as he grabbed Dumbledore by the throat, punching the old wizard's wand out of the way when Dumbledore tried groggily to focus and bring it to bear. Defenceless, Harry had Dumbledore at his mercy, and he made sure the old man realised it when he wrapped his hands around Dumbledore's throat and he began to squeeze. Soon the Order and the press were shouting as Harry began to throttle Dumbledore._

" _Luna was the woman I loved! The one thing that has kept me warm at night for the last few days has been the thought of finding her murderer, and making him pay the price for what happened to her!" Harry hissed angrily but loud enough to get through to Dumbledore._

 _He knew he had made a terrible mistake in attacking Dumbledore, he knew that in his mind. He also knew Croaker would not be happy as well, but since his precious department and himself were out of the firing line there was nothing Croaker could do about this and he wouldn't lift a finger._

 _But he didn't care. He had had enough of Dumbledore, of the so-called light, of the Ministry of Magic playing their political games, their never-ending promises, the way they had gatecrashed the funeral. He'd held back his anger with Granger, but only just. He had sworn not to lose his temper with anyone because he had not wanted to do it on a day like this and he would learn to regret his actions for the rest of his life, but Dumbledore pushed that button._

 _What the hell had possessed the old man when he had said that to him? He just didn't get it, he didn't understand how Dumbledore felt if he was exposed to two girls whom he didn't like then he'd fall in love like nothing had happened. Did he not have any common sense?!_

 _Seeing Dumbledore choke was more satisfying than anything that had happened all day. He had been awake half of the fucking night trying to face up to what was going to come, now he was strangling one of the people who had made decisions for him without even bothering to contemplate their mistakes down the line._

 _Harry let Dumbledore go, and stood up quickly, not out of shame or guilt, but out of indifference and besides at some point the magical shield preventing the Order and the Ministry from catching him would go down soon. He stood over Dumbledore, watching as the old wizard choked and coughed for air._

" _You are not worth it, old man," he said, reaching into his pocket and drawing out the necklace Luna had given him for his birthday the year before, the one Mrs Weasley had tried to take._

" _Luna is gone," he intoned and with that he left the magical shield, pushing more power into it._

 _Creating a magical shield while allowing for a Portkey was not an easy task, but there were ways of making it happen. He was just glad he'd found it._

 _Now for the hard part._

 _Dealing with Voldemort._

Harry rested his head back on the sofa, and blew out a breath. He honestly hoped he didn't have to think anymore about what had happened in those dark days since Luna's deaths. His anger towards Dumbledore had been a spur of the moment thing, though he had enjoyed throttling the old man for his tactless and senseless comment regarding Luna.

The Daily Prophet and the Ministry had had a field day after his assault on Dumbledore, and he had known that he had begun to burn his bridges with the Wizarding world. Fudge had issued a warrant for his arrest, forgetting his pledge to use the Boy-Who-Lived to support him though Dumbledore had learnt from his mistake and publicly announced that he would not press any kind of charge against Harry Potter, that he had made a terrible mistake in provoking him when his girlfriend had just been murdered. None of that had mattered, Harry had planned to leave the Wizarding world anyway, all he had done was simply make it easier for himself.

Croaker hadn't been happy with him at all for his loss of control, but the old wizard let him off the hook - almost, and let it go soon after. Harry shook his head and focused on what was going to come.

Bester had told him the burglary would be taking place in just a few days. He would need to keep his mind clear and not focus too much on Luna and her demise too much.

Harry had to hand it to Bester to make a plan for a burglary that was really clever.

He was looking forwards to it.

* * *

Until next time.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter and how I wrote Fudge, Hermione, and Dumbledore.

TTFN.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer - I don't own anything, you should know the drill by now.

* * *

The Thief.

 _Bester, no matter what he gets me into, at least I know where I stand with him_ , Harry thought to himself, relieved that the burglary the other thief was roping him into was a lot more straightforward than anything other criminals would want, but he wondered why the other thief's crimes needed some kind of weapon.

When they had spoken to each other in the cafe, Bester was just basically telling Harry what he already knew after the young wizard had looked into his mind. But truthfully it was always good to hear a plan laid out in such a simple manner, but then again Bester didn't like complex plans that had so many obstacles and loopholes that could result in a mistake.

There was plenty that could go wrong, he knew that. Bester knew that as well. And that was why he was heading straight for his study. The room was fairly spartan with a desk and a computer on it. Heading over to the desk, Harry unlocked one of the drawers and found himself looking at the pair of silver-black guns sitting at the very bottom of the drawer that was otherwise empty. Harry looked at the guns with a sinking feeling settling in his stomach, he hadn't seen any of his guns since the end of the war with Voldemort.

After Luna had died, Harry had gotten into a few fights with some of the Death Eaters to take the war to them, and each time he had been lucky to escape with his life because the Aurors and the Order of the Phoenix were constantly trying to interfere and bring him around to their way of thinking.

While he had a proficiency with his wand and his casting and had a great repertoire for magic, the Ministry of Magic had managed to put a tracking charm on his wand. Harry still had no idea how they'd done that - his best theory was that during one of the early days of him attacking the Death Eaters, someone had simply cast the spell when he hadn't noticed, and he felt the most likely time had been during a little fight with the Death Eaters when they'd attacked Hogsmeade in force to prove to the magical world they were not as frightened of Albus Dumbledore as folklore led to believe when a Death Eater had managed to disarm him during a fight and his wand had been sent flying off to land at least five foot away from the fight. Harry had managed to kill the Death Eater with his flick knife when the other wizard had kept him busy, but his wand had been out of his reach for over two minutes, that gave anyone plenty of time to either steal the wand or plant a tracking charm on it, and because of its more refined custom design, no-one could plant any of the more complex spells on it that were possible with those primitive wands people like Ollivander sold. Once the fight was over, Harry had managed to retrieve the wand, knowing it was his just by grasp without being any the wiser.

After that, his attempts to attack the Death Eaters began to go wrong.

The first time it had happened was when he had been in Wiltshire and was trying to track down Malfoy Manor. Voldemort had arranged for camps for his followers to be set up in the counties where the manors of his followers lived, though Harry didn't know and frankly couldn't care less if the Dark Lord was simply trying to throw off his enemies. It just seemed a bit….stupid putting camps in the same counties.

Anyway, as soon as he began the attack on the camp, Harry found himself dealing with several Aurors from the Ministry, including his old "friend" Dawlish. At first, for one stupid moment, Harry had thought the Ministry was actually going to do its job and protect people. Instead, they had attacked him and tried to stop him from killing the Death Eaters. They had gotten in his way and as a result, the Death Eaters had had a night time of fun where they killed a few of the Aurors. That was the Ministry's own fault for not taking the threat of Lord Voldemort seriously.

The Ministry Aurors had caused more harm than they'd realised by getting in the way, and so Harry had escaped with the night mission a complete and total failure. He had managed to kill a few Death Eaters, sure, but he had hoped to completely wipe the campout, and he would have succeeded if the Ministry hadn't interfered.

At first, Harry had thought the Ministry had just gotten lucky, but it didn't last and he started to get a very good idea of what had happened from his initial checks didn't reveal anything wrong with his wand. He went out again on the next night and attacked a group of werewolves who'd allied themselves with Voldemort - more signs of the Ministry's stupidity, thanks to that stupid toad Umbridge, the werewolves and other magical creatures like them had been pushed, with Malfoy's endorsement since he knew he was giving his Lord and master allies and fresh recruits for his armies, had been victims of various bigoted laws without realising that by pushing the werewolves into the arms of the extremists they were effectively killing themselves - with a number of well placed silver arrow curses when the Ministry arrived.

Success! The tracking charm he believed had been placed on his wand had been set to activate and broadcast his location straight to the Ministry, otherwise, it would go dormant. Again, another group of Aurors had tried to take him prisoner, but he had managed to escape, leaving behind a number of werewolf corpses that had died when the silver arrows as magically dissolved into liquid silver and it was passed through the bloodstreams of their victims. Even if a werewolf had only been hit with a single arrow, they were still dead.

But Harry had managed to isolate and take the spell off his wand the next day, but he had come to ask himself if maybe using a wand was a wise move. What if another tracking charm was placed on it again and next time an Auror may get lucky? So, in the end, Harry left Magical Britain for a short time, and he found someone he knew and trusted, to a degree, to teach him to use guns and he got his hands on two pairs of handguns and he simply added runes into the metal from there. Harry figured that because he was using a muggle weapon to kill the Death Eaters, no-one barring a few wizards would realise what he was doing. He knew he was burning more bridges with the magical world, including a few with Croaker though truthfully Harry couldn't care less if Croaker liked or respected him for what he had done. After Luna's death, his relations with the magical world had been strained and since he had decided he was going to leave one way or another, well that was just too bad.

But it was there in Croaker's manner whenever they met nowadays, a kind of barely hidden disdain for him using muggle means to fight a magical war but Harry didn't care. While the majority of witches and wizards thought he had come to use piercing hexes, Croaker had not believed it. But again Harry was not bothered. He had needed something to even the gap between him and the Death Eaters without compromising his safety and giving the Ministry something to track. He was just relieved that he had met a custom wandmaker who had told him that even if Ministry had planted a spell on a custom wand, their design and the way they were made would make it very difficult for anyone to record magical signatures. And besides, even when he had gone out hunting Death Eaters, he would still use his wand, to some degree.

The runes were fairly basic; they repelled any other witch or wizard from tampering with them, and the guns themselves were much more resilient than any other firearm.

Looking at the guns sitting in the drawer, Harry remembered the first night he had used the guns…..

 _Knockturn Alley was a haven for Death Eaters. It was also the haven for, and he was quoting Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars here, "scum and villainy." Only the people - and things - in this alley were more disgusting than anyone from Tatooine. Dressed in a black cloak that covered his entire body and hid the majority of his face while a spell had been cast over his hood to enable him to see without anyone knowing who he was, Harry slipped through the darkness with his hands curled around the familiar handle of his wand and the unfamiliar grip of one of his guns. Part of him wished there was another way, that the Ministry had not pushed him down this path, but because they had planted that tracking spell on his wand, he'd had no choice but to learn how to shoot._

 _Granted, Harry knew that he'd lose some, if not a great deal, of the support he had from Croaker, but he couldn't bring himself to care; Croaker used him for his skills and expertise as a thief, beyond that the older wizard didn't care one way or another what he did. Harry was okay with that, though he hoped that when the war was over and his work was done with, he wouldn't have to deal with Croaker even if the Head Unspeakable had given him a lot of help and thanks to him Harry no longer had to worry about the Horcruxes. It had taken a long time, but ever since Harry had passed on that soul piece he'd found from the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts and the one from Grimmauld Place, Croaker had managed to locate the others; sure the one in the Gaunt shack had been hard, but Croaker had used fiendfyre to destroy the shack._

 _Voldemort had clearly not suspected that anyone would do that. He had probably imagined someone like Dumbledore showing up and triggering the deadly traps, and so with typical shortsightedness, he hadn't bothered to place any of the heavy-duty and more complex wards that managed to mitigate the worst of an outbreak of that kind of magical fire._

 _Granted, the Cup of Hufflepuff had been hard to destroy but once the goblins had learnt from Croaker who had gone in person to deal with the Horcrux since it would be better coming from the Head of Ministry department and not from an underling, the Horcrux was destroyed._

 _Harry pushed that out of the way when he came to a pub or a tavern. He couldn't see the name of the place even with magic, the signage was so old and looked like someone had burnt it off that it was impossible to tell what it said or what the picture was. When he walked in he paused. The place was packed full of laughing and drinking witches and wizards while oppressed and miserable looking House-elves served drinks and food only to be kicked around for their troubles._

 _After placing a small rune-cluster to the doorway which would stop anyone getting in and out when he started, Harry moved through the crowd and headed straight for the bar. Harry placed a galleon on the counter, attracting the attention of one of the bartenders; a balding man with thinning grey-brown hair, crooked brown teeth, and a boil on his nose._

" _What can I get you?"_

" _Firewhiskey," Harry ordered knowing that anything weaker would be seen as a weakness, besides he needed something to numb his mind a little bit so then he could face up to what he was about to do._

 _As soon as he got the drink, Harry tried to down the shot in one go, but it didn't work. He nearly choked, and he underestimated the strength of the burning alcohol as a result. It took a minute for the burning sensation to pass, and when he had gotten control over himself thanks to his occlumency, Harry turned back to the bartender, who was busy tending to the rest of his customers and so hadn't noticed the young wizard's mistake._

 _Still reeling from the effects of the alcohol, Harry looked around the pub, trying to count how many people were here with him. It took a while, there was so much noise and laughter it made it very hard to concentrate, but when he was finished Harry had counted at least 150 people. Some of them may not have been Death Eaters either because they didn't want to serve someone and not get anything major from it, or they wanted to support Voldemort in a less obvious manner. No matter - they were all dead anyway. Sure, they might become martyrs to Voldemort's cause but so too were anybody else killed in the fight._

 _Turning back around, Harry slapped another galleon on the counter and attracted the bartender's attention again. The old wizard leaned forwards with his hands clasped around a bottle that only had a quarter of firewhiskey left, and Harry whispered, "I'm looking for a Death Eater."_

 _The old wizard stiffened and pulled away, staring back at Harry with surprise. "What do you want with a Death Eater?" the old man asked._

 _Harry let a slow Malfoy-esque smirk drift over his face - after having to deal with Draco's self-appointed role of being the nemesis of Harry Potter, he felt he could pull it off - before letting it dissolve. "I want to discuss business with one," he said._

" _You mean you wanna join the Dark Lord and wipe out those filthy mudbloods from our world?" the old bartender countered._

 _Harry smirked back and nodded, not reacting to the slur towards muggle borns since he had expected it at some point. "I've wanted to do it for a while, unfortunately, I don't have the connections to make a contact in complete secrecy. I thought this place might be the best place."_

" _You've come to a great place, though half of the alley have connections to the Death Eaters," the old wizard said, not knowing that he had just signed off the death warrants of many of his neighbours. "Might take me a while, there are probably quite a few 'ere."_

" _Don't worry, I've got time," Harry said, taking the bottle out of the old wizard's hands and slapped another few galleons onto the counter to pay the man for the drink and to give him the incentive of looking for a Death Eater quickly._

 _Harry didn't have long to wait. The old bartender was only gone for five minutes, and he brought back a tall, weedy looking character with a beaky nose that curled downwards like a vulture beak. "You wanted me?" the character asked._

" _Yes," Harry replied, and before the Death Eater or any of the patrons could do anything to stop him, Harry whipped out his wand and one of his guns and he stunned the Death Eater._

" _Hey, you're not-," the bartender got out before Harry shot him._

 _The unfamiliar sound of the gunshot brought everyone up, but they didn't have time to react as Harry pulled out his other gun other quickly shoving the wand away, and he started opening fire, mentally counting how many bullets there were in each clip which helped him stop firing and reloaded, buying the time he needed to keep fighting. Harry let his mind go blank, and he started shooting indiscriminately at the patrons in the pub. A few of them recognised the guns as muggle weapons, but their jeers that he refused to fight with magic were drowned out by the shooting and the screams of the dead._

 _Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a few of the patrons try to escape but the rune cluster he'd slapped onto the doorway stopped them leaving. He wasn't surprised one or two of them would try to get away. Just because they may have had a more….. blacker magical training than other wizards like the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs in Hogwarts, but many witches and wizards were instinctual cowards and he wondered if Dumbledore's preachings towards violence had filtered into this part of magical society. For a second he thought of simply letting them leave, or just not shoot at them in general._

 _But he discounted that in a second, Harry knew the moment he had his back turned they'd get their courage back they'd shoot him in the back._

 _So he didn't have a problem shooting them first._

 _As Harry walked around the pub slowly, listening for any survivors, he came across one of the patrons on the ground. It was a woman, about fifty by the look of it though he could be absolutely sure, struggling to move, the bullet wound she'd taken to her chest made it impossible for her to get up._

 _She glared at him with hatred, but Harry could pick out the fear in her eyes effortlessly as he approached her._

" _You…..damned blood traitor….. the Dark Lord will kill you," she hissed up at him._

 _Harry looked down at her. The threat didn't surprise him all that much. He had heard them all before, and that shit about being a blood traitor was predictable enough. He levelled the gun down at her body. "You'll soon meet your fucked up master soon enough," he said, and he ended her life with a single shot to the head._

 _When everyone was dead or dying, Harry walked back over to the counter and he checked the Death Eater he had stunned earlier. He was still out, but as he looked over the rest of the pub he let out a sigh._

 _He had just slaughtered an entire collection of Voldemort sympathisers, but how many of them supported the twisted wizard? How many of them just wanted to live their lives without the Dark Fucker putting pressure on them and on their families? How many of them had planned on just sitting on the sidelines?_

 _Luna would not want him to do this, and he had the fucking nerve of thinking he was honouring her memory and avenging her death, well he knew she would be disgusted by him. Harry licked his lips in disgust at himself for what he had done, but he knew he couldn't do anything._

 _At the end of his life…. well, there would be a reckoning but it would need to wait for now. But hopefully, by then, he would have accumulated some good deeds in his life…._

 _A groan from his feet made him look down. The Death Eater was beginning to come around. Well, that was expected, he thought to himself, the stunning spell he'd used was strong enough to put someone out for an hour or less._

 _Sighing, he levitated the Death Eater and removed the cluster from the door and he walked out with the Death Eater. He didn't know and frankly didn't care if he'd caught a low-level member of Voldemort's army or if he'd plucked someone out of the Inner Circle. It made no difference to him, but the more Death Eaters he killed and interrogated, the more information he'd get to learn more about what Voldemort was doing. The Dark Lord had been fairly quiet recently, Harry wanted to know why but he also wanted to find out more about Voldemort's other operations and deal with them as soon as he could._

 _He felt he had made a good start._

Looking down at the guns in the drawer, Harry lifted one of them out and studied it. He had ignored this particular drawer in his house for a couple of years now and he had refused to acknowledge the existence of the drawer as well. He had gotten it in his head if he refused to use the firearms and pretended they hadn't played a major part in his fight against Voldemort.

Ever since that night where he'd gone to Knockturn Alley to get his hands on a Death Eater, Harry had been trying to find some way to make amends and do something, some good deed….. He remembered how last year he had travelled to New York and learnt that a major donation to a number of Children's hospitals on Christmas was going to be stolen by a greedy member of staff for this businessman who wanted it to start his own business. Harry remembered how he had also been in the businessman's house at the time, and overheard the greedy staff member talk to someone else, and Harry had set up a little trap. He had taken a few pictures of the greedy businessman in the act with an accomplice and he had sent them to the police along with the money after he'd knocked them unconscious.

He had done his best, but sometimes Harry had the feeling he wasn't getting too far in redeeming himself in Luna's eyes for what he had done.

He shrugged and picked out one of the guns and checked it over; he wasn't worried about the gun itself, but it gave him something to do. Aside from the guns he kept in his bedroom and his living room as protection in case his wand wasn't up to scratch, Harry kept his guns out of his life but he couldn't part with them since they were a part of his history. Besides he had kept them because they may come in handy.

Harry checked his watch. Bester wanted to meet him to go over the plan while looking over the jewellery shop, and he didn't want to be late.

He closed the drawer.

Sometime later, Harry found himself opposite Bester again. The other thief had met him out of the Underground station and had walked with him down the street to the cafe. It didn't take long for Harry to see the jewellery store, it was hard to miss even with the memories and thoughts he had taken from Bester's mind. It was not too different from any of the shops along the streets, except it was right next to a shop that was a burnt out ruin. Harry knew Bester had set up the fire, on both ends of the shop to cause a huge amount of damage in order to make the heist work right, and since it was close to Bonfire night Harry couldn't see why it couldn't work.

Bester noticed Harry's interest. "Just think about it, Harry," he said quietly. "In 48 hours, we are going to be richer."

Harry snorted.

"What?"

"Nothing. What are you going to do with your share?"

"I don't know. I've got plans and ideas of melting the metal down and removing the diamonds to sell off, that way I can make more cash overseas, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen," Bester replied. "You?"

"Probably lock it up and sell it at a later date, or keep it around in case I need some cash for a rainy day," Harry replied without saying aloud that he had sold off gold bullion thanks to the successful deal he'd made with the goblins after he had learnt how much of a fortune that basilisk was after he'd killed the bloody thing in his second year. It wasn't something he usually thought of but the bullion had allowed him to open up bank accounts - with forged IDs and so on in a number of countries if he needed it, he had made a number of investments or he had just left the money alone, and let it gather interest in the accounts.

He had no intention of telling Bester about that. The gold bullion was a secret he had kept for a long time even from Luna. He had kept it out there in case he had needed it.

Bester shrugged. "No worries," he replied. "I can't wait for this one."

"I can tell," Harry smiled at the other man before it disappeared. "Let's just take it slowly."

Bester leaned forward. "Do you have a gun?"

"Yeah."

"Good. We may need them."

Harry knew a large number of the crimes Bester was involved in happened to involve guns. Personally, he hoped that the gun he was planning to bring, and what Bester had advised him to bring, was not used.

 _Harry was sobbing his heart out in the bright white tiled walls of the room he had broken into for the interrogation of the Malfoy family. The room was deep inside an abattoir, appropriate considering what he had just done to the Malfoys. He had spent the last five hours torturing the blonde family after he had captured them after tracking them to a muggle house where the Malfoys and Voldemort and a few other Death Eaters had attacked the innocents inside._

 _Voldemort had left his followers to it so then they could enjoy their fun. Fun? The Malfoys and their friends had tortured the innocent children while the parents watched and screamed before Lucius and one of the male Death Eaters tortured and murdered them, but Narcissa…._

 _Harry had always wondered what the bitch did behind the scenes, and now he knew. For ten minutes, Harry had watched and had taken photographs of what the Malfoys did with the Death Eaters, planning on revealing to the magical public the rotten flesh that existed beneath the surface of the Malfoy's perfect image, and then he had acted while Narcissa had calmly and slowly and sadistically castrated two six-year-old twin boys. The screams echoed in Harry's mind, and he had made sure the bitch had heard nothing but those screams after he had cut out her tongue and had made a precise cut on her larynx before he got started taking a blowtorch to her genitals._

 _As he had done that, he had made sure Draco and Lucius had been watching, but he had silenced them as well before he had snapped Narcissa's neck and then turned over to the two men. As he sobbed, his mind echoed with his coldly uttered words._

" _ **You have crossed the line tonight. For years you have tried to be my enemy. That was a big mistake. I am not like anyone in the magical world. I have killed before, and I have already killed dozens of your brethren without mercy. Old fools like Dumbledore will tell you are forgiven for your crimes, you can pay off morons like Fudge while cowards like Amelia Bones look on and pretend they aren't seeing what you're doing….. but not anymore. You have exhausted your chances, and you are dead. You are both dead. Tonight, you are going to tell me everything that you know….. I will get everything from you, every dirty secret, every plan….. By the end of this, if you masturbated over your own mother, I will find out."**_

 _Out of both of them, Lucius Malfoy was the hardest to break. It took him three hours to shatter Lucius' occlumency barriers which were stronger than anybody else Harry had met, barring Dumbledore and Croaker. By the time he was finished using a chainsaw to slowly cut off the man's feet and fingers, then his hands, then his knees, and upwards before he popped one of Lucius' testicles. The scream had been so loud, Harry needed to cast a silencing spell to block it out._

 _The pain was so immense it had done its job though. Harry had then raped Lucius' mind; he had been placed under so much pain and torture, his mind shields had buckled under the strain. Oh, Lucius was a veritable fountain of good knowledge and information about Voldemort and the majority of his plans - he had copied each and every piece, and then he had killed Lucius since his mind was practically dead._

 _After that, he had started on Draco. The younger member of the Malfoy family had been horrified by the death of his parents, understandably, and he had threatened Harry, begged and pleaded but Harry had run out of pity for the Death Eaters long ago._

 _It didn't take long to interrogate Draco. While he had mental shielding, it wasn't particularly strong and it didn't take long for Harry to get into Malfoy's mind. What he had found….._

 _Harry put his head in his bloody hands._

" _ **It was you!" Harry hissed at Malfoy who was breathing heavily, though the blonde was regaining some degree of awareness enough to get some idea of what his would-be killer was saying to him.**_

" _ **W-wha-?" Malfoy gasped out, virtually catatonic with agony.**_

" _ **You murdered the woman I loved," Harry snarled as he looked over the table, trying to find the right implement to use to kill the blonde bastard. "You RAPED HER!"**_

 _ **He turned around, unwilling to look at the blonde for a moment. "You bastards….. you never learn, do you?! You never learn to keep things straight and narrow without going for those who have no part in your little conflicts, are you?!"**_

 _ **Malfoy was coming around, and he looked maliciously back at Harry as he turned around. "You'd thrown away my offer of friendship," he said matter of factly. "It was an insult."**_

" _ **And you couldn't get over it?" Harry sneered back at the blonde. "Get over it! You have a few hours of life left, plenty of time to make whatever peace with whatever you worship. 'Cause I can you now, Lord Voldemort is going to end up where you are now; helpless, hopeless, and very dead. I'm going to kill him, Malfoy. I'm going to gut him alive, and I'm going to keep him going for a long time before I kill him. He will join you and the rest after."**_

 _ **Harry was marching on Malfoy and he picked up the blowtorch. Malfoy paled in horror when he saw the Boy Who Lived slip on the mask with the blank visor as he lit up the torch.**_

" _ **Potter, w-what are you doing?"**_

" _ **A little experiment. I'm not sure you believe in the poison you've been force-fed, so I'm going to torture you to see for myself if you've got what it takes to be a Death Eater."**_

 _ **Malfoy's eyes shot open in horror and he tried to pull away, but he was restrained so tightly he almost cut the circulation to his arms and legs. "No, please…. Have mercy!"**_

" _ **Why should I? Tell me, would it be justified if I kill you, torture you after you'd tortured Luna?"**_

" _ **P-please-." Malfoy tried to plead, but Harry lashed out.**_

" _ **WOULD THAT BE JUSTIFIED?!"**_

 _ **Malfoy broke down sobbing, and he cried, "No."**_

" _ **Wrong answer," Harry replied coldly.**_

 _Now, hours later, Harry looked at the dead body of Draco Malfoy, or what was left of him. He would send all of them off to the Ministry, or to Diagon Alley… he didn't know which, frankly he didn't care. He had found out what he had wanted to know, he had killed the bastard who had murdered Luna, but he hadn't expected it to happen so quickly._

 _It took him a few hours to pull himself together, and then he waved his wand and removed all of the blood with just a flick that removed all of the blood and gore better than any other cleaning product._

 _Harry sent the bodies off using a Portkey to Diagon Alley after he'd weighed the pros and cons. He didn't know and he frankly didn't care what the backlash would be. Before he'd sent them off, Harry burnt the word "JUSTICE" in the foreheads of all three of the Malfoys. He had ended their family and he felt nothing for them._

In the real world and in the present, Harry took a deep shuddering breath and bit his tongue to stop himself from crying. Why the hell was he remembering every hideous detail of what had happened in the last few years he'd spent in the magical world? Part of him just wanted to wipe his memory, but he knew it was not a good idea. Aside from the fact he would go back to the magical world, which would whitewash every single part of the plan he had worked hard to put into place to escape the magical world in the first place. And considering his actions at the end of the war, Harry would have been lucky not to receive the dementor's kiss.

But he wished the memories would go away.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer - I don't own anything, yadda-yadda.

Please leave some feedback for my story, we're coming up to the concluding chapter soon.

* * *

The Thief.

Harry winced as the high-powered drill in Bester's hands cut a hole through the wall. He had stepped away from the other thief to get out of the way of the clouds of dust which were an unpleasant by-product of the process. His ears were covered by a pair of headphones which muffled the sounds to a degree but he could still hear the sounds of the drill and of the party going on outside.

Bonfire night, Harry thought to himself, one of the best times to ever commit a burglary or a robbery, just like on Christmas or on Halloween (he refused to think of the messes he had gotten into because of Halloween; his parents were murdered, the Dursleys had used the damn occasion as both a party over his parents deaths and an excuse to beat him because they could, to those years on the streets when he wanted to do nothing more than to _burn_ down those ridiculous costumes and that stupid trick or treat thing, to those disasters at Hogwarts), all you need to do is wait for them to make a lot of noise, get drunk, and then you can do virtually anything you wanted.

Unfortunately, he had not counted on getting a headache from the sound. Harry didn't know and frankly didn't care what this place had sold before Bester had burnt it down, but despite the overpowering stench of the dust clouds it warred with the lingering stench of burnt paint and plaster and whatever had been in the place before it was burnt.

The two thieves had been in the ruins for only half an hour. Bester had met him at the Tube station entrance at around 10 pm, and he had led Harry around the back so no-one noticed them suddenly walking into the burnt out shop from the front door; just because some of them would be drunk didn't mean some of them wouldn't be sober.

When Harry and Bester had both been a part of that gang, they'd had it drummed into their brains to never take anything for granted. It was one of the reasons why they had not been caught.

Unfortunately, the cloud of dust and the after the stench of burnt furniture was making him thirsty, and he hadn't brought a bottle of water with him and he didn't dare ask Bester, who was busy concentrating on the drill. The wall wasn't that thick but Bester was very slowly cutting a hole into the wall rather than go too fast, he didn't want any problems or find something in the wall that would make it virtually impossible to get through.

Finally, the hole was cut and Bester, using a claw hammer, managed in pry off the hole like a knife lopping off the top of a boiled egg.

Bester went through first. Harry handed him the drill and the claw hammer first before he passed through the two bags for carrying the jewellery before he went through himself into the next shop. As he walked over to the far wall, the last obstacle to the jewellery shop, Harry looked out of the window while being careful not to bump into anything, he could see the laughing crowd as the coloured explosions of the fireworks as they popped, crackled and sizzled in the sky went off.

It was almost unbelievable that only a few feet away, separated by panes of glass, people were partying away unaware of what was going on. Whether some of them would even be aware that they had been dancing, laughing, and singing badly and drinking near the jewellery shop that was burgled on this night was something he didn't know, but then again he doubted whether they had enough awareness to know what they were even wearing never mind what they were partying near.

Bester had just placed the tip of the drill against the wall and he started it off when Harry reached him. The sound of the drill went right through Harry's ear, the clouds of dust choked him again and he began to feel thirsty again. Cursing himself for not bothering to bring a bottle of water with him for this one, Harry walked over to the sales counter to see if there was anything he could drink.

To his delight, he found a bottle of coke. He opened the top and sniffed. Yeah, it was definitely coca cola. Probably flat, but anything was better than nothing and besides even if he took a small amount now, he'd stave off dehydration for a few hours. He tipped his head and poured some into his open mouth, making sure that the top of the bottle didn't touch his mouth even as he poured the flat soft drink into his mouth. He wasn't stupid enough to leave any physical evidence behind, and despite choking a little on the mouthful he'd taken, it staved off his thirst before he headed back over to Bester though not too close since he didn't want to be choked again and have the dust of that dust in his mouth.

The other thief had managed to carve out a large enough circle and he was almost finished. Thank god for that, Harry thought to himself, as he watched the drill-bit move closer and closer to the starting point.

BOOOM!

Harry jumped in fright at the sound of one of the fireworks that were louder than normal. It was just a firework, he told himself, just a firework….. So why was he remembering one particular night during his private little war with Voldemort?

 _The werewolves had just transformed, or they were in the process of transforming into werewolves; he could tell even from his position in the air from the loud sounds of snapping and popping bones and the groans of agony as the werewolves in the camp below were transforming. Not for the first time, he was relieved he was not down there on the ground, and he had to admire the Death Eaters' nerve for being so close to the werewolves. They'd isolated the werewolves in the centre of their camp with extremely strong protective wards to keep the werewolves from attacking them, and they would soon be released while the Death Eaters were keeping themselves safe._

 _The Death Eaters were like those guys who watched and cared for the hounds that hunted foxes, they kept the werewolves under control while trying to stop themselves getting bitten or torn to shreds. The camp itself had been placed deliberately close to a Pathfinder camp where dozens of innocent muggles were presently enjoying a camping trip in the Highlands of Scotland some distance away from a town, a place called Helensburgh, which was a few miles away from Glasgow itself._

 _It was one of Voldemort's tactics - to place a camp that was hidden by a variety of wards so then no muggle could come within a metre of the place before the big surprise, close to something like a town, a village, or a city, fill it with werewolves close to a full moon and then release them as soon they had finished transforming._

 _The result - death, destruction, and a number of muggles who had survived would only become werewolves themselves. They would be tortured day and night and subject to all kinds of brainwashing techniques to make them into the perfect warriors; obedient, blood-thirsty and viciously senseless, just like how Voldemort liked it._

 _Harry didn't know for sure what they remembered of their previous lives, but truthfully he didn't want to think about it. This was just another symptom for how much Voldemort simply and truly did not care about the suffering of others._

 _Harry closed his eyes in exhaustion even as he tried to remain upright on his broomstick; it was an old Cleansweep 12 and not the Firebolt Sirius had bought him for Christmas before he'd been kissed by the dementors, but he didn't care about speed and power so long as he had a means of staying out of reach of the werewolves, but he had been moving from one Death Eater camp like this to another for the last few hours, for him - relatively speaking, with barely any rest, and he had been using a Time-Turner he had managed to take from Croaker to go back through time and make sure he arrived at the various camps on the same night, at the same time before the werewolves could be released._

 _A grimace crossed Harry's disillusioned face as he thought about the trouble he'd gone to get his hands on the Time Turner. It had cost him some of his favours from Croaker and it had been one of the first things he had asked from the Head Unspeakable just after Luna's death and he'd decided to take the fight to Riddle and make him pay for what he'd done._

 _But Croaker had dug his heels in, believing that Harry didn't have the maturity or the intellect to know what kind of dangers could be caused by using the Turner; he might paradox himself out of existence and cause all kinds of damage, something that Croaker himself wasn't entirely sure about since no wizard had ever been stupid enough to try it._

 _In the end, the only things which finally won Croaker over were when Harry had sworn a few magically binding oaths that promised he would never try to meet himself, not that he would, and that when he was finished the Turner would be returned. All he wanted the Turner to do was to simply go back in time a few hours or minutes, and then launch an attack on one of the 56 camps the Death Eaters had set up with Voldemort's order to house the werewolves and release them onto the unsuspecting muggle world._

 _The Helensburgh camp was number 38, so leaving only 18 left to go. But he was getting tired and he fully planned on spending the next day sleeping while Voldemort and the Ministry cleaned up the mess. The Ministry would be horrified by the amount of death, but they would need to clean the mess up before any muggle happened upon the scene and took in the sight of the corpses of transformed werewolves and dead Death Eaters, and considering what was being done to get their attention they would be so busy. It would be the busiest they had been since this whole mess had started._

 _In his mind, Harry had done more for the war effort while people like Fudge and Dumbledore either floundered or played games. He had thought Fudge was out of his element when he'd seen the minister at Luna's funeral, but he was hopeless now as more and more Death Eaters were turning up dead._

 _The Minister had demanded that he be arrested for the murder of "high-standing, respected purebloods." It made no difference to him if the Boy Who Lived was doing the job he and his Ministry should be doing._

 _Dumbledore…. well, Dumbledore was Dumbledore. He was still trying to find the means of controlling Harry, but truthfully the young wizard asked himself how long it would be before the old wizard took the hint it was not going to happen._

 _His nose wrinkled when he caught the musty stink of the werewolves, and he realised he was wasting time. Sooner or later the whole lot of them were going to be released, and they needed to be killed off quickly so Voldemort's attempt to increase his 'recruitment drives' and flood his army full of werewolves would be a complete failure._

 _He may hate the magical world for rolling over and sticking their heads in the sand to avoid their problems, though he had not entirely been innocent of that himself since he had given Voldemort a wide berth, but he had no intention of letting the problem of Voldemort's armies getting any bigger than they were already._

 _Lifting his wand and taking a few small chips of silver out of his pocket, and with a flick, he transfigured the silver into dust and with a wave of his wand he created a miniature raincloud full of silver dust, and it rained down on the camp. Immediately screams and roars of surprise and agony echoed through the air to where he was sitting on his broomstick above the clouds, and Harry waved his wand again and mentally cast the next spell._

 _A cloud of silver emerged from the tip of his wand and drifted downwards in the direction he was pointing at before suddenly the cloud suddenly burst and a hail of silver points exploded out of it._

 _The points became longer and one end of their bodies sharpened into wicked looking arrow or spearheads. Some of them became longer, larger until they were as long as harpoons whalers used to hunt and slaughter whales, while others were no longer than crossbow bolts and others were only as big as nails, but still just as sharp._

 _Harry watched fascinated as they shot through the air, whistling their way down and his face didn't even twitch as the sounds of very human Death Eaters mixed with the roars and howls of pain as the arrows sank into their bodies, and then he waved his wand and pointed downwards, and created a few more clouds which exploded into silver arrows and spears that rained down on the Death Eaters. It might be going a bit over the top, he thought to himself as he listened to the sounds of screaming as he created another cloud that burst downwards on the Death Eaters and their werewolf slaves, and there was a chance a few of the werewolves would escape, but he had to cripple Voldemort's war effort and make him prolong the war beyond their capacity to fight back._

 _Sure, he'd be stressed out in the morning, but he felt it was worth it._

 _Unlike Dumbledore, Harry believed he was actually serving the common good; where Dumbledore would play games and make sacrifices, Harry felt he was doing more to bring the war to an albeit messy but successful end._

 _It took Harry half an hour before he felt it was safe to go down, and very slowly and calmly he mentally commanded his broomstick to fly down. Taking his wand out, Harry walked through the camp while checking for anyone living and levitated the bodies and placed them on a pile, taking immense care with both the Death Eaters and the werewolves as he did._

 _Once he was finished he conjured a net made from silver barbed wire; it might be going too far, but he wasn't going to take any chances. Once he was sure he'd accounted for the corpses, Harry headed for the ward stone. It took him a few moments but when he retrieved his broomstick he was satisfied. He had set the ward stone to pump more magical energy into the wards the Death Eaters had thrown up around their campsite, and it go on pumping more and more magic into the wards and then they would pop like a balloon. He had learnt that wards required a fixed amount of energy, and the more energy you pumped into the wards, they would eventually pop._

 _It would not be noticed by the muggles, but it would certainly be picked up by the Ministry and he needed some way for the numerous Death Eater/werewolf camps dotted around the country to be detected._

 _When he was done, Harry retrieved his broomstick and it wasn't until he was in the air that he closed his eyes and braced himself for another hour of sleep deprivation. Reaching into the pocket of his coat, he drew out the Time Turner….._

Smashing the head of the hammer onto the glass display case, Harry reached through and pulled out a handful of rings and necklaces, and he admired the sparkle. It reminded him of that night where he had gone after those 56 Death Eater camps and used silver as his primary weapon, no killing curses, no piercing hexes. Just ordinary silver arrows/nails/spears.

He could also hear the howls from the werewolves as the deadly silver weapons impaled them and the silver began to dissolve as it entered the bloodstreams of the werewolves, poisoning them…

Pushing that thought aside with an effort though he genuinely didn't understand why he was remembering that mess, Harry pulled out the rest of the jewels before he headed over to another case and smashed it while Bester worked on another display of his own. Neither burglar spoke. They knew the place probably had CCTV, and the less they said or did or interacted with each other, the better.

It did occur to the thieves to try to find the safe and grab the money that the shop owner had inside, but neither Bester nor Harry planned to do it. For a start they didn't know where the safe was and if there were doors with locks that needed codes to unlock them or not, or even if the shop owner lived in the flat above, though Harry doubted it since no-one had come down to check on the shop if they'd heard anything; he and Bester were moving as silently as they could, though the hammer smashing the display cases to get inside were an exception, and nothing had happened. And they had not heard the sound of the police arriving outside though they weren't going to bet it would stay like that.

Besides cracking safes was a time consuming and boring job, and not every burglar had the patience for it. Unlike those lying movies, not all thieves even pretended to bother with them, and not all thieves knew the tricks needed to actually break into them. It was like with lockpicks; useful, but they weren't a thief's style, not when there were crowbars, drills, and bump keys that could do the job in half the time.

Harry knew that he could easily use his wand to unlock a safe with a simple aloharmora charm, but he only did that when he was alone and with a muggle nearby he didn't want to take the risk. He needed to keep his cover. Croaker was the only person who knew he was still alive, though he had doubts about that now since there was someone trying to get into his home…. Harry still wasn't sure who it was, or even if the other was out to specifically look for him, but time would tell.

Bester's reasons for not going after the safe were easy. This was supposed to be a "get in-get out" job and if there was one thing Bester and Harry had learnt, it was don't get too greedy unless they wanted to be nicked. The guy who'd taught them the tricks of the trade had been an educated guy, and he was smart and had enough common sense to learn from any and all mistakes that he had made and pass that knowledge onto others so they didn't make the old mistakes but learnt from their own.

Bester and Harry had learnt how to crack open safes, or set up camera equipment to observe the combination being tapped in making it a longer job, but in this case, there was simply no time, and truthfully neither burglar cared. They were having a grand time stripping the shop bare of the jewels. What made it even better was they could hear the party but no-one from outside could see inside the shop because of the heavy-duty boards and roller shutters that protected the front of the shop from the outside.

Harry wondered for a moment what the owners of the shop would think when they discovered the hole in the wall that had led him and Bester here, but he shrugged his shoulders; burglary was an occupational hazard, they would get over it.

When the shop had been cleared out, the two thieves passed through the holes again and back to the burnt-out ruin, and then out of the back.

"You know the police are going to look for us, right?" Bester asked as he slipped off his balaclava when they were sure there weren't any cameras (just because Bester had surveyed this place before the burglary didn't mean there weren't a few cameras around).

"I know," Harry said as he thought about that bottle of coke he'd stashed away to throw away later after he'd taken a swig. "What are you going to do now?"

"I'll probably go down South, or maybe West," Bester replied, looking thoughtful for a second before he focused on his temporary partner's face. "I haven't decided, but what about you?"

Harry sighed. "I dunno," he admitted. "I don't want to stay in London, not since the burglary before this one. I think I might lie low after this one."

"Good choice. Well, goodbye, Potter."

"Good luck, Bester," Harry replied.

The other thief nodded and walked off. Harry watched him leave, and then he turned around and walked away.

000000000000000

The moment Harry passed through the ward-line to walk into his house, he froze in horror and he rushed into his house to find the intruder. He didn't have to look for long when he heard a noise in the kitchen. Slowly he walked towards the door, his wand out and a few choice torture spells running through his mind before he just decided to kill them and be done with it, but he paused over the threshold into his kitchen in surprise.

He couldn't believe it.

"You?" he whispered.

* * *

Until next time.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter.

This is my finale, and it's also the last chapter of the last Harry Potter story I'm ever going to write.

Please leave feedback.

* * *

The Thief.

"Potter?" Hermione Granger gaped in surprise.

Harry couldn't believe it, he didn't want to believe it. But surprise quickly gave way into fear and anger. Despite all of his best attempts to leave the magical world behind and resume his life in the muggle world, the Order of the Phoenix simply could not leave him the fuck alone! Damn, he thought to himself, I need to think, but do I have time to think while Granger is here? How did she get in any way? I made sure the wards had been strengthened!

But while he was still frozen trying to think up a way of getting this latest crisis resolved, Granger asked,"How can you still be alive?"

Wait, what?

"What did you say?" Harry whispered; if this was an Order trap then it was a damn good one. He knew Granger was part of the Order of the Phoenix, but why was she here seemingly on her own, but why was she asking him how he could still be alive?

And then…. he realised…Granger had been just as surprised to see him as he had of her. What was going on? Didn't she know he was here, otherwise what was she doing in his house?

"How can you still be alive, I saw you die?" Granger whispered.

Harry stared at her for a long moment as he probed her mind. Hermione Granger had never studied the mind-arts, but thanks to her logically ordered intellect, she had relatively decent natural occlumency barriers. Granted they were not strong enough to repel an attack from a trained practitioner of the mind-arts, but then they didn't need to be; Harry didn't plan on driving himself too deeply into her mind, he just wanted to skim the surface thoughts.

Her surprise was genuine. She hadn't expected to see him here, but that was far as he was willing to go; just because Granger hadn't trained herself in the mind-arts, that didn't mean she wasn't aware of them. Besides if he asked her some of the questions which had popped into his mind, she might get suspicious, and the last thing he wanted was Hermione Granger firing so many questions at him at once.

"I faked my death," Harry replied, blandly.

Granger blinked. "Faked your death?" she repeated.

"Yes, faked," he said patiently, "you fucking idiot! That's what I just said. I faked my own death, and in answer to your next question, which probably begins with 'why,' I'll tell you; I was tired of the magical world, and after Luna's death, I wanted nothing more to do with the magical world again," Harry said solemnly. "Unfortunately, with Fudge's ministry, Dumbledore's order, and Voldemort and his followers to deal with, I needed to find a way to get away without anyone eventually tracking me down."

Harry watched Granger process his explanation for a second before he decided to ask his own questions. "But enough of that for now. What are you doing here? You weren't expecting to find me, so why are you here?"

Unseen by Granger, he cast a mild compulsion charm similar to the one he'd cast on Ron Weasley when he'd caught the boy trying to go through his trunk as though it were his. Harry knew from experience the only way Granger could talk was if you argued with her, and he was not in the mood for a fight.

"I didn't know you were here," she began, "I was trying to find a new place to live in London that was close to Diagon Alley, and I have enough money from my parents to look and afford a new home. I didn't want to live in the magical world with so many different objects; I hated the Burrow and Grimmauld Place. Every night and morning, I'd wake up and hear the clattering of ghouls, House-elves, or something else would happen."

Harry nodded, feeling the same way though he had other reasons to dislike the two mentioned houses which were completely inferior to his lovely home. He had not been fond of the Burrow and his godfather's old house, and that was before he had discovered the Horcrux that Regulus Black had stuffed there. But what he had hated the most was living on top of others, especially since the Order of the Phoenix had used the two houses as their own rent-free hotels when they had places of their own. Why, what was the point?

He may live in the middle of London, but he would take the sounds of the traffic and commuters over the weird mutations in his godfather's old house. Some of them had been terrifying thanks to the Horcrux that Regulus Black and Kreacher's little mission had brought back, but the good news was without the Horcrux's influence the mutations had been easy to subside.

"Go on," he said, again casting another mild compulsion charm in case the old one had worn off.

"I always check the street I'm interested in for any magical activity and if there are any neighbours I can speak to nearby, and I found your house. There were so many wards on it, but I couldn't get past them until tonight. I've been reading up on wards, and I found a way in by repelling them," Granger said before she went into a lecture about repelling, something Harry didn't need to hear about since he knew about repelling but he hadn't applied the necessary defences to prevent it happening on his house, though he would as soon as Granger left, because he had not wanted to take the risk of anyone detecting the spells.

Now he was going to put up every spell he knew to stop someone getting in. He was never going to allow this to happen again. The last thing he wanted was the Ministry of Magic finding out where he was and that he was still alive. They would have him in Azkaban before he could blink.

"And so when you found the wards and couldn't get in, you became curious and had to know about me?" Harry's voice became scathing as he tried to hold back the nervousness he was feeling.

If Granger knew there was a wizard here with such heavy wards, had the stupid bitch told someone…?

Unaware of his fears that the magical world would soon one day take him back and shove him into Azkaban after everything he had done to end the war ever since Lunas' death, Granger nodded.

Harry sighed, cursing whatever genes had made this nosy girl the busybody she was.

"How did you survive, Potter?" Granger asked. "I saw it, you were burnt to death in fire-."

"It was faked," Harry interrupted, sighing under his breath.

"Faked, but how-?" Granger asked, and Harry couldn't help but laugh. "You know, it never fails to amaze me; people call you the brightest witch of her age, and yet you have the imagination of retard! With magic, it's pathetically easy to fake your death and fool others. It's even easier to fool wizards, especially ones of Dumbledore's ilk and calibre. Always believing everything they see, it's a long-standing joke wizards believe everything in front of them even when they know there are ways to disguise the truth. I'll tell you what happened, and after that everything should be clear to you….."

" _AVADA KEDAVRA!"_

 _Harry cursed as he leapt out of the path of the latest killing curse fired at him by Voldemort while the Death Eaters tried to corral him into a single spot to let their master kill him with just one curse while everyone in Diagon Alley either hid away in their shops or they tried to escape. It wouldn't help - Harry had placed various kinds of spells and wards to prevent anyone leaving. It was reckless and cruel to condemn the shoppers to their deaths, but it was the only way to keep Voldemort from leaving. He was not going to let the Dark Lord escape. Not again. This ended here, today._

 _Right now._

 _But the Death Eaters were not making things any easier for him. They were trying to contain him and make it easier for Voldemort to kill him while they might injure him with their own spells. Unfortunately for them, Harry had his guns and thanks to the experience he'd learnt on the job taking the fight to them, the Death Eaters had problems corralling him. More than once, Harry managed to kill two or three of the Death Eaters, or he critically wounded one._

 _Voldemort and his followers continued to jeer and taunt him for not behaving like a wizard, and it was true that while Harry could have used his wand he hadn't wanted to use it and become dependent on it when he could have used both of his guns to pick off the Death Eaters faster than any spell, the benefits were obvious, and the ends justified the means._

 _The biggest problem, however, was the killing curses and the other spells Voldemort threw at him while he had to dodge the mild curses thrown his way by the Death Eaters to push him into a position their master could kill him. He had leapt out of the way just in time, and he had watched the curse impact yet another Death Eater. Ignoring Voldemort's screech of rage, Harry dropped to the ground and he began rolling around on his shoulders, using his legs to move him around so he could take advantage of the loss of the Death Eater and Voldemort's screech to shoot as many of the Death Eaters as he could before the Dark Lord got his act together._

 _There were only eleven Death Eaters left, and as he rolled around, avoiding the incoming curses that were fired at him once some of the Death Eaters got over their surprise of him dropping to the ground and shooting them, he managed to kill at least seven of them before he managed to jump back to his feet, but he'd needed to roll out of the way of a purple curse. As he got back to his feet, Harry jumped out of the way of a second purple curse - he didn't know what it would do, and he had no desire to find out either - and he fired two more bullets at the Death Eater, who didn't get out of the way in time (you would think they had the intelligence to step out of the way by now, but the problem the Death Eaters had was they didn't understand the dangers of firearms; they could taunt and jeer as much as they liked, but the guns were still able to kill them), and he was killed instantly. Harry didn't spare the corpse a second thought as he paused to replace the clips, jumping out of the way of more curses, once more thankful that he had made the decision on the streets to train his mind in order to survive. He had known he was too weak and frail to throw himself into the fights that occurred on a daily basis, and he used the cunning and the sneakiness he had used to escape the Dursleys._

 _He had learnt how to take in his surroundings so he could use them to his advantage. An alcove could hide him. A car could provide cover, and he was thin enough to fit underneath one with no problem. Knowledge of the street layout with the back streets and the back alleys, with the backs of houses and shops, could provide him with means of getting in and out._

 _By the time he had become a burglar, it had been simplicity in itself to use his new skills to learn new mental tricks like only needing to mentally select what he was going to take and work on it from there. When he had begun his occlumency training, he had only strengthened his mind and allowed it to become better with those skills. He only needed to mentally keep count of each shot he took with each gun, and compare the number of shots to the number of bullets in each clip. It was possible for him to do so without the benefit of the mind-arts, but they made it much easier and less of a hassle._

 _The mind-arts also gave him the means of being nearly aware of what was going on around him while he took a chance to kill one or more of the Death Eaters with his guns._

 _Only three were left now, he thought to himself as the body of the Death Eater who'd thrown those purple coloured curses at him died on the street._

 _The Death Eaters tried desperately to bottle him up despite there being only three of them left, but with so much room Harry didn't find it difficult to deal with them. One of the Death Eaters was Bellatrix LeStrange. The mad hag had her mask off, revealing a face that was recovering from a decade in Azkaban prison. She was laughing and cackling insanely as she sent as many dark curses towards him, the intensity alone driving him backwards._

 _Growling irritably as the rapid spell-fire he was getting, Harry tried to work out what he was going to do to get out of this one. LeStrange was throwing too many spells at him for him to fire back, and the other two Death Eaters were trying to box him in. Jumping out of the way of another spell, Harry got an idea… He put one of his guns back in its holster and he drew out his wand._

 _LeStrange noticed and she laughed. "Finally decided to fight like a wizard, Potter instead of using muggle toys?!"_

 _A slow smile crossed Harry's face for a second, unseen by either LeStrange or Voldemort. Just you wait, he thought to himself as he pointed his wand…. at one of the Death Eaters, who yelped in shock as Harry summoned him towards him._

" _What new trickery is this, Potter?" Voldemort yelled even as LeStrange took that as her cue to fire a few more curses, including her trademark cruciatus curse._

 _Harry ignored them as he deftly manoeuvred the summoned Death Eater into the path of the curses while using his gun to destroy the hand holding the wand -extreme, but then the Death Eater was going to die anyway, why let him defend himself and ruin the chance to eat death? - and he held him up before the curses impacted his body._

 _The cruciatus made the wizard scream in pain, but Harry winced as the bright lights of the curses impacted the Death Eater's body, making him gasp in agony before letting out a gurgle, and his body became limp. He was either dead or dying, but Harry didn't care. Using the Death Eater's body as a human shield, Harry had no shame when he stepped out and fired a few rounds at Bellatrix._

 _The mad witch went down instantly when she couldn't use her wand to stop the bullets from impacting her body. It was so odd, Harry thought to himself, Voldemort knew about guns and bullets because he was muggle raised and yet he hadn't seemed to have bothered with teaching any of his followers to conjure blocks of rock or sheets of strong steel to block them. Harry didn't know if Voldemort had exorcised the basic knowledge of the muggle world from his brain or if he had decided to just forget it by relying on his wand._

 _It didn't matter - the wicked witch of the east was dead. Harry snorted at the nickname, it was a bit childish, but it was an appropriate name, though he was sure Bellatrix would not have liked it._ _Bellatrix LeStrange had only one living sister and a niece. Andromeda Tonks and her daughter Nymphadora, the stupid Auror who tripped up over herself under the invisibility cloak at Privet Drive. Harry didn't know how Andromeda was going to react to the loss of her sisters who had both been willing Death Eaters, and how Narcissa had been sick and cruel enough to torture two little boys by castrating them, but he didn't care._

 _Pushing that thought out of his mind, Harry focused on the scene before him and took stock of the situation. Only one more Death Eater was left with Voldemort, and whoever was underneath that mask and hood was clearly frightened by him._

" _Get over there and fight, you fool!" Voldemort hissed angrily._

 _The Death Eater looked between the Dark Lord and the young wizard, clearly trying to decide which of the two evils was the less daunting. but Harry didn't give the Death Eater any thought. With just one shot, the Death Eater fell to the ground, blasted down by a bullet to the chest._

 _With his last follower dead, Voldemort raised his wand and fired three killing curses at quick succession. Harry ducked again as each curse was thrown at him, before flicking his wand and banishing two of the Death Eater corpses towards the Dark Lord._

 _Voldemort was surprised by that move even as he stumbled back. "Not exactly Gryffindor tactics, Potter," he commented lightly as though the pair of them were on an outing to a park. "Oh, I know you are a Ravenclaw. But I would have thought those tactics beneath you-."_

 _As he'd been speaking, Voldemort had been banishing the first two corpses, only to find Harry had levitated a few more and had sent them towards him. With a sneer, Voldemort vanished them away, but Harry fired his guns._

 _With a surprised shriek, Voldemort dropped to the ground as the bullets virtually destroyed his leg bones to his feet. Another gunshot took care of his wand hand, and another bullet went right through his shoulder. Lying weakly on the ground with blood oozing from the wounds, Voldemort watched as Harry walked over to him._

 _Looking down at his wounded and frankly pathetic enemy, the same enemy who had been spent years hunting him down, Harry thought it was anticlimactic; for years Voldemort had tried to kill him off because of hurt pride. Harry would never know, and frankly didn't really care anymore, about what his mother had done on that Halloween night, but Voldemort should have tried to move on instead of pushing someone unafraid to push back. All the idiot had done was push and push, so was he truly surprised his target had lashed out?_

 _Mentally he shrugged, it didn't matter anymore._

 _It was too late now. Today it ended._

 _Weakly Voldemort spat. "I never….. imagined you would use….guns," he commented. "Why? Don't you have any magical pride?"_

" _Like you do, murdering innocent children simply because their parents have opinions different from you, you stunted runt?_ _It's got less to do with pride and more with practicality," Harry replied, knowing it was slightly foolish to not take advantage of this turn of events and just end the Dark Lord's life here and now, but truthfully it was rare for Voldemort to want to talk, and besides it wasn't every day he had a literal captive audience._

" _How so?" Voldemort asked quizzically, pain mixing with curiosity as he looked up at him._

" _Someone from the Ministry put a spell on my wand. They were trying to find me ever since Luna's funeral, where I assaulted Dumbledore, and when they had the chance one of them planted a spell on my wand when I was disarmed during a fight with your Death Eaters. The Ministry began showing up and getting in the way whenever I was attacking your followers. It didn't take long for me to get rid of the spell, but it made me realise that if they could do it once, they might try it again. They aren't imaginative enough to change their tactics," Harry explained, "so I decided to change mine. I got my hands on a pair of muggle guns, and I began using them since the types of spells the Ministry uses to track down witches and wizards need to be planted on wands. They don't work on muggle weapons."_

 _Voldemort chuckled but it quickly turned into a nasty cough which took him a while to get over. "Very well done," he complimented hoarsely. "No, I mean it; you recognised a problem and you adapted. True, most would have done something to their wands, but they would have still used magic."_

" _I had considered that but truthfully I was tired of relying on just one method of dealing with your followers," Harry replied. "Even if you use some kind of spell to block a magical signature, it may leave traces the Aurors can track. The best way around that is not to use magic at all."_

 _At that moment the two wizards heard the sounds of popping and they turned as the Order of the Phoenix appeared, with Dumbledore appearing last wearing those gaudy trademark robes of his._

" _Harry, what are you doing?!" Dumbledore asked aghast as he took in the scene. Harry looked around himself though he kept a close watch on the Order of the Phoenix._

 _Diagon Alley was a shambles. Many of the shopfronts had been destroyed either by fire spells or they were smashed to pieces, wood timber, brick and mortar, and shards of glass littered the cobbled street. Lying in some of the doorways were the bodies of some of the patrons and customers. Dumbledore's heart went out to the sight of a little boy crying for the loss of a woman lying face down in the street, but then his eyes noted the Death Eaters who were just as dead._

 _His expression darkened with horror and anger as he saw the gun in Potter's hand, but before he could say or do anything the boy spoke._

" _Ending this once and for all," he said._

" _But did you have to kill-?" Dumbledore tried to ask but Potter interrupted him._

" _Yes, I did," Harry's eyes were chips of ice as he gazed at the naive old fool, unable to comprehend how he could be so foolish. "If left untouched, the Death Eaters will regroup and they will continue to cause problems for everyone on a political and public level for years to come. This should have been done a long time ago. But instead, you and the Ministry allowed them to go about their business as though nothing happened. You allowed them to bribe their way into positions of power and influence. If we went along with your way of thinking, they'd be given a slap on the wrist and allowed to continue to spread their poison. By killing them off, I'm making sure the Death Eaters and their master never darken the magical world again," Harry snapped in a scathing tone, tired of Dumbledore's constant pacifism._

" _But they could have been rehabilitated!" Dumbledore argued angrily._

 _Harry raised an eyebrow and he pointed to the small child crying over the body of the woman lying face down in the street. "See that kid there? His mother was trying to protect him when a Death Eater murdered her. In cold blood. Can you rehabilitate someone like that, someone who will pretend to be repentant but will never hesitate to do it again? You are even more stupid than I thought, no actually I already knew you were stupid. The Death Eaters are not disobedient children, they can't just be given a mere detention. They are terrorists, murderers. The only way to end it is to kill them, there is no other way."_

 _Completely ignoring the old wizard now, Harry walked over to Voldemort's wounded body, his hand going into his pocket and taking out a silver necklace. He held it over Voldemort's face so the Dark Lord could get a good long look at the piece of jewellery._

" _See this?" Harry asked the Dark Lord rhetorically. "This was one of the last gifts from Luna Lovegood before your followers murdered her. Did it never occur to you that you were making a fatal mistake?"_

 _Without waiting for a reply, Harry jabbed his fingers into one of the open wounds, making Voldemort cry out in pain. Harry shoved the necklace into the Dark Lord's mouth. "That's it, open wide. I've waited a long time for this."_

 _Harry then spent the next few moments choking Voldemort and shoving the 'necklace' down Voldemort's throat. "Swallow, or I'll snap your neck in two!"_

" _Harry, no-!"_

 _Harry ignored Dumbledore's order as he tried to concentrate on the floundering and choking Voldemort as he struggled to try to get the 'necklace' out of his mouth, but with a growl and a savage twist there was a crack and Voldemort's body went limp. Harry had just broken the Dark Lord's neck, and he let go and let the head droop loosely to the ground at an unnatural angle._

 _Harry stood up and looked at Dumbledore. "It's over. He's dead. I've done what you've wanted. Now, it's over for me and him."_

 _Dumbledore had his wand in his hand, but he had been so taken aback by the violence that he had been virtually frozen. The sound of Voldemort's neck snapping had jolted him into action, but it was Harry's last statement that made him pause. "What do you mean, it's over for you and for him?"_

 _Flicking his own wand Harry levitated and summoned the corpses of the Death Eaters._

" _What are you doing?" Dumbledore asked but Harry ignored him as he levitated the bodies and set them down around him, piling them in so he couldn't get out of the wall of corpses._

" _I've had enough of life," Harry explained as he worked, though he didn't take his eyes off of Dumbledore in case he tried something to stop him, "Luna's death was the last straw. That's why I killed the Death Eaters, using muggle means to finally wipe out the disease. I want to die. I don't want to live like this; alone, a prisoner forced to do the dirty work of others without being able to have a life."_

 _Dumbledore stepped forwards in a panic while he tried to work out why Harry was walling himself in like that with the corpses of the Death Eaters. "Harry, there is no reason for you to commit suicide," he said, certain that the young wizard planned for that. "We can work this out-."_

" _No thanks. I've had enough. How soon will it be before I'm sent to Azkaban for what I've done? I just want it to end," Harry replied and with that, he closed his eyes and concentrated as he held his wand upwards._

" _STOP, NO!" Dumbledore screamed in horror as he realised what he was doing. He raised his wand to stop Harry from whatever foolish attempt at committing suicide he had in mind... only to cry out in pain, clutching his shoulder as the bullet from the gun that was suddenly in Harry's hand. Quickly Harry summoned the wands from the rest of the Order of the Phoenix who got over their surprise at their leader's injury. With them helpless, they could not interfere._

 _"I couldn't take the risk," Harry's voice was quiet even as he gazed at the injured old wizard before he took a deep breath and carried on. W_ _hen Harry's wand tip started generating a fireball that blew up like a balloon. The fiendfrye spell grew out of proportion as Harry spun around in a circle and set the other bodies on fire while the boy bent down until he was out of sight like he planned to die sitting down, the Death Eaters who had followed their master to their last battle before the fireball spread outwards and it became a mini inferno until it became mountain of bodies._

 _There was a muffled scream from the only living person in that inferno. Harry Potter._

"I wasn't in the heap. I had apparated out of the alley, but I'd left behind a recording crystal that recorded my screams to make it seem like I had still been there while the fiendfrye did its work. With the number of Death Eater corpses around me, it was easy to mix my 'ashes' with theirs," Harry finished his tale though there was a lot more to go, though he didn't really plan on letting Granger know that. She knew too much already.

"No, surely some of your 'remains' would have been found-," Granger tried to find some reason that his escape attempt had been poorly executed, though Harry could not work out how.

"Have you never heard of cremation?"

Granger was dumbstruck as though she had never considered the possibility, and Harry mentally rolled his eyes wondering how anybody could have considered this girl intelligent when she was incapable of remembering such a simple detail as that.

"Did you know that a lesser version of fiendfrye is used by the magical world for cremation?" Harry interrupted. "The fire magic of the spell is so powerful it can reduce a human being to dust. Fiendfryre was considered too dangerous because it required magical power and a focused mind. Sure, ordinary fire spells can do the same job, but fiendfrye was perfect because it was so quick only it was far too powerful to be used by improperly trained witches and wizards."

"And you've been in the muggle world all this time?" Granger asked.

"Yes," Harry replied, mentally preparing himself for what he had to do, and he gripped his wand handle in anticipation, but before he did he had to know something. It had just entered his mind though he had never really paid much attention to it over the last few years. "Granger, at the funeral and at the Burrow, you constantly tried to push me and Ginny Weasley together. Why?"

The question took the witch by surprise, but remembering his reactions in the past she answered easily. "Professor Dumbledore believed you and Ginny would have been a great match, and he believed that Luna was not right for you."

"And you believed him? It did not occur to you to let me make up my own mind as to who I love?"

"Are we really going to do this now?" Granger asked awkwardly, but Harry couldn't care less. He had often wondered if Granger had been led around on a leash by Dumbledore when she'd been at Luna's funeral, but he hadn't expected her to be this easily manipulated because he had always limited the contact he'd had with the bitch at Hogwarts.

"Yeah, we are. You practically tried to push me towards her when I was grieving for the woman I loved," Harry said.

"Ginny would have looked after you-"

"How? She could barely look after herself," Harry argued back before he sighed. "Anyway, it's over. It's academic. But you are still here."

Granger shivered at the sudden sinister tone in Harry's voice, and she realised that Harry was still there and he was a very, very dangerous wizard. She had seen the results of his work first hand.

"What are you going to do now?" Granger asked worriedly as she suddenly seemed to remember that she was in the presence of someone powerful. "Are you going to kill me too?"

"No. You're not worth it, and besides I am done with killing," Harry replied.

He was telling the truth. He had felt physically ill just taking his gun out of the townhouse for the first time in years since he had left the magical world. The thought of killing Granger even if she had barged her way into his home in her curiosity sickened him, but he did need to deal with her. But there was a way around it.

Granger looked relieved but she suddenly looked terrified as she realised that she was still in danger. "What are you going to do?" she whispered.

"This," Harry said and suddenly Hermione found herself looking down the length of Harry's wand. She didn't have time to move or scream as the bright light blinded her….

0000000000000000

Harry looked down at Hermione Granger's body, wondering what was going to happen now. She was unconscious courtesy of the stunning spell he'd used on her which had gone hand in hand with the memory charm he had used to wipe her memory which had removed the memory of their meeting but more importantly coming to this street, so hopefully, this would be the end of it.

He was just…frightened that after all he'd lost others from the magical world would find him only unlike Granger they wouldn't make the same mistakes….

There was nothing he could do. He had no intention of leaving the townhouse and simply moving to greener pastures. There were simply too many magical influences in and around the townhouse, and if he moved he might leave something behind for a family of muggles to find by accident.

Besides, while he tried to say to himself this was just a fluke that could have happened at any point, Harry had to admit it had been a close call, and he would now need time to think about what he could do to make sure it never happened again.

But as he looked down at Hermione Granger's body he wondered if this was just a preview of things to come. The good news was Granger had not told anyone about finding a townhouse on one of the streets she was trying to find a new home, but that was either because she had forgotten or she'd simply thought it didn't matter.

Either way, he was grateful.

Sighing, he bent down and picked her up (who knew the girl would be so heavy…?) and he calmly apparated out of the townhouse and took her to the place she was renting at the moment which he had picked up upon in his home. Settling her down in a chair, Harry stood up and raised his wand. For the next two minutes, he carefully conditioned her mind to look elsewhere for a new home after making sure she looked at the house prices around that part of the city and find somewhere else.

When he was finished, Harry simply left the flat and returned to his home. Exhausted he walked into his living room and dropped down on one of his chairs and closed his eyes with a sigh. Re-opening them with a slight effort, he reached under his shirt and pulled out the necklace Luna had given him. The same necklace he had "shoved" down Voldemort's throat. Granger was really thick. The Order of the Phoenix was stupid. Did they really think for one moment he would shove one of the last things he had of Luna? The piece of jewellery had been too good to shove down Voldemort's throat. He had used a transfigured sickle, the silver coin had enough silver content to be transfigured into a duplicate necklace, and that had ended up in Voldemort's throat. When he had planned to kill Voldemort, Harry had wanted to ensure that there was something symbolic to the death, and so he had hit upon shoving something down Voldemort's throat. But he'd had no intention of shoving the real necklace down the Dark Lord's throat since the piece of jewellery, the real piece of jewellery, was too good. So he had duplicated it and used that instead. It wasn't the real one, but a representation. That had been good enough for the purpose.

Putting the necklace back, Harry tried to relax. Dealing with Granger had exhausted him and he only hoped he never had another run-in with her ever again.

He fell asleep in that same chair.

0000000000000000

" _Are you sure you want to do this, make everyone think you're dead?" Croaker asked bluntly._

 _Harry nodded. It had been two days after the final death of Lord Voldemort and his apparent suicide, and he had spent the past 48 hours finalising his arrangements with the goblins to sell the gold from the Potter family fortune as bullion for him to sell in the muggle world in return the goblins would get a nice chunk of the profits while keeping his secret._

 _The magical world would think he had, in fact, liquidated his assets because why else would he have a fortune from all the investments and businesses his family had set up over the years that had disappeared?_

" _It's the only way, then I can be forgotten," he replied solemnly. "I am too big in the magical world, Croaker. Too noisy. I had to use muggle weapons to fight Voldemort once I found out the Ministry were tracking me down using my own wand. I could have used any of the techniques to prevent that, sure, but it would have allowed something to fall through the cracks."_

 _Croaker nodded, his expression giving nothing away, but Harry could tell the older wizard didn't like him using muggle means to end the war though he was more neutral about it. He was old enough to understand that not everything needed to obey the rules, though he was still a wizard. He was just relieved when Croaker didn't say anything._

 _Croaker meanwhile was relieved Potter had still used his wand. "Do you think you can be forgotten?" he asked rhetorically._

" _Probably not, but I can try to have a life not involving Death Eaters, Dark Lords and Light Lords and Ministers with delusions of grandeur," Harry replied. "I will still be a part-timer here."_

" _I know. Don't expect to have a magic-free life."_

 _With that, Harry Potter turned and walked off to enter a new phase of his life. He knew he was never going to be truly free of Croaker and the DOM but he was okay with that for now. He was okay with his part-time status._

0000000000000000000

3 months later.

Harry chuckled to himself as he looked at the piles of US dollars littering his living room. He'd had a rather busy month in the United States of America after carrying out a slew of work for Croaker (3 jobs laid on top of one another - he'd never have expected a better boss than Croaker, and the best thing was Croaker wouldn't bat an eyelid at what he'd done), and he had taken the opportunity to plunder some of the banks and jewellery shops in the states.

Las Vegas. Ah, for muggle thieves the place was like a watered down version of Fort Knox but for a qualified young wizard like himself (he still smiled as he remembered getting his masteries in DADA, Ancient Runes, Transfiguration, and Charms), the vaults in every single casino run by crooks in a city famously built by crooks were easy to crack; he'd only had to cast a disillusionment charm over himself along with a few silencing spells to make sure no-one heard him walk with the muggles who took the cash down to the vaults. Once he had them in his memory, it was easy for him to select a night where he could simply portkey himself to them and plunder all the real cash and leave the muggles scratching their heads with the stupid counterfeit muck still there.

It was dangerous, of course - not because of the muggles, he could easily deal with them with no problem though they would give him a few headaches. No, it was from the MACUSA he had to worry about. Like all other witches and wizards around the world, the MACUSA believed he was dead, but because he had used a portkey to move around the vaults of Las Vegas to steal from them and used a number of other spells he'd been worried the localisation of so many spells the MACUSA may actually find him.

The MACUSA was probably still the most isolationist country in the International magical community; sure, the Rappaport doctrine may have been re-addressed over the decades, but they were still extremely intolerant towards those who practised magic anywhere near muggles. As a result, their sensors were top-notch. Their laws were many times stricter as well. If they had caught him then they would probably punish him in a far worse manner than in Britain for that, if they caught him when they knew what he had done to the Death Eaters, Azkaban would have been beyond his fears. No, the American version would have been worse.

It was a strange contradiction, Harry thought to himself as he thought once more of America and its magical equivalent; one side had been famous for its open door policies, and yet the magical version enforced a doctrine where the magical world would be permanently cut off from the muggles. Still, he couldn't blame them. He had read the history of what had happened to make that doctrine reality, and he could not help but pity the MACUSA for the massive monumental mess caused by Dorcas Twelvetrees's breach of the statute of secrecy.

Even now, many Americans refused to have anything to do with muggles, so it had still been a tremendous risk for him to use magic anywhere near a muggle city.

He'd solved that problem by going out of the city limits and create the portkeys he'd needed miles away from the city itself and then use them in the same way.

Fortunately, America's massive size meant that the people there made his precautions were unnecessary but the worry was there. It was more of a dare in itself when he used the same technique to plunder the banks in New York, L.A, Detroit, and Chicago.

Okay, so he couldn't spend or use this money anytime soon, but he planned to carefully and quietly move it into the bank accounts he had around the world which he had set up with the help of the goblins and were used to sell his gold bullion. For the time being, he could keep the cash in his house unless there was a major economic mess which rendered it useless.

Grabbing a few of the bags he'd used to pack it all, Harry walked them up to the walk-in attic and dropped them in a corner. The attic contained a number of items he'd stolen over the years, keeping them either out of some desire to keep some of his more memorable heists even if he wasn't the most nostalgic person since he had never really found the time, or because he still had time before he could finally get rid of them. With no visitors and many wards around the townhouse (he had spent a fortnight carefully adding those wards to prevent other witches and wizards getting in, and he had also added a nifty little charm which would pick up any witch or wizard scanning the area for magic like Granger had done and simply turn the wards off until the caster had left), and no irritating neighbours to prod and poke in his business, no-one would visit. The money would have a nice home here.

In a few times, he would be able to flog it, in another few years.

All in all, it was grand being a thief, though he wished he was sharing his life with Luna.

* * *

Well, that's it. This is my last chapter of the last Harry Potter story I'll ever write. But please feel free to read any of my other stories.


End file.
